- published: 22 May 2018
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Tiny Rowland
Roland "Tiny" Rowland (27 November 1917 – 25 July 1998) was a British businessman and chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate from 1962 to 1994. He gained fame from a number of high-profile takeover bids, in particular his bid to take control of Harrods.
Early life
Roland was born Roland Walter Fuhrhop on 27 November 1917 during World War I in a British internment camp for aliens in India. His mother was Anglo-Dutch and his father was a German trader. As the Fuhrhops were refused entry in to the United Kingdom following the end of the First World War, that family settled in Hamburg, Germany. He was said to have been nicknamed "Tiny" by his mother because of his large size. In the 1930s, he was briefly in the Hitler Youth.
Emigrates to UK
His father, who despised Adolf Hitler, moved the family to the United Kingdom in 1937, where his son attended Churcher's College, Hampshire.
Rowland then worked for his uncle's shipping business in the City of London. He took his uncle's surname, 'Rowland' on his 22nd birthday. On the outbreak of World War II, he was conscripted into the British Army, where he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. As enemy aliens, his parents were interned on the Isle of Man, where his mother died. He himself was interned as an enemy alien after trying to arrange for the release of his father.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Tiny_Rowland
Anthony Howard
Anthony Howard may refer to:
See also
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard
Anthony Howard (journalist)
Anthony Michell Howard, CBE (12 February 1934 – 19 December 2010) was a British journalist, broadcaster and writer. He was the editor of the New Statesman, The Listener and the deputy editor of The Observer. He selected the passages used in The Crossman Diaries, a book of entries taken from Richard Crossman's The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister.
Early life
Howard was the son of a Church of England clergyman, Canon Guy Howard and Janet Rymer. He was educated at Purton Stoke School at Kintbury in Berkshire and Highgate Junior School, followed by Westminster School and Christ Church at the University of Oxford, where he read Jurisprudence. In 1954, he was chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club and, the following year, President of the Oxford Union.
Howard had planned a career as a barrister, having been called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1956. Meanwhile, he was fulfilling his National Service obligations in the army, during which he saw active service in the Royal Fusiliers during the Suez War. He wrote (initially unsigned) articles for the New Statesman about his reluctant involvement in the conflict, an action for which he was almost court-martialled.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_(journalist)
Anthony Howard (swimmer)
Anthony Howard (born 30 September 1979) is an English former competitive swimmer and freestyler who represented Great Britain in the Olympics and European championships, and England in the Commonwealth Games.
Howard was part of the bronze medal winning British 4×50-metre freestyle teams at the 2000 and 2005.
He represented Great Britain at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney in the men's 4×100-metre freestyle relay however the team did not progress beyond the heats.
Howard attended three Commonwealth Games representing England in 1998, 2002 and 2006. He won a bronze medal at the 1998 Games in the 4×100-metre freestyle relay.
See also
External links
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_(swimmer)
Podcasts:
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Anthony Howard - At the end, Enoch Powell was a very unhappy fellow (34/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: And of course, he's told us himself, and this did show great candour, that when Ted lost the election in 1974, for some reason, apparently, he'd gone to bed early. This is the story he used to tell, maybe it's true or not, but he sort of woke up to learn the news, and it might have gone on all night, anyway, because the Labour...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though? I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the pre...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Advantages of being a public school boy in the army (6/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I joined the army in January 1956... national serviceman. Joined the East Surrey Regiment, called up to, because I suppose that was where we were living. We were living in Epsom at the time, which is Surrey. Kingston Barracks, gloomy place. And did my basic training, not at Kingston, oddly enough. This is one of the myths abou...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Beginnings (1/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I was born in 1934... the 12th of February 1934, in, I think, a flat in Kensington - 24 Cheniston Gardens, which is off Kensington High Street. My dad was, at the time, a priest in charge of Christ Church, Victoria Road. He was an Anglican clergyman and it was a very posh neighbourhood in those days, sort of full of major gene...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audien...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I th...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: To be a successful politician, it’s very difficult to say what you need. I mean, I think there’s no point in being a politician if you are not able to perform. I.e., if you’re hopeless as a speaker, forget about being a politician. If you are no good as a debater, forget about it. If you have complete kind of nondescript quali...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - What went wrong for Michael Heseltine? (26/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: What went wrong? Well, what went wrong, I suppose, was Margaret Thatcher. He and she never got on. I think partly Michael's fault. Michael is sufficiently old-fashioned to have hated the idea of having a woman boss. In that sense, he is like Soames Forsyte, as I mentioned. And therefore, the chemistry never worked. On the whol...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - My appearance on 'Desert Island Discs' was disappointing (39/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I think I was a great disappointment with that, with Sue Lawley, because she was doing it when I was doing it. And I think I asked for… I suppose I was influenced by having been in the army, and I asked for a camp bed (officers for the use of), which is what you have in the army. And I thought that rather than lie on the groun...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Robin Cook was not leadership material (29/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: Robin Cook was a really extremely formidable parliamentarian, a very good speaker. Very incisive and, when in opposition, some of those speeches he made were really terrific. He wasn’t an easy man. When I was editor of the 'New Statesman', I had to have somebody… or you had to have... a sort of MP who’d come into your Friday c...
published: 22 May 2018
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6:00
Anthony Howard - At the end, Enoch Powell was a very unhappy fellow (34/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:00
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 34254
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, he's told us himself, and this did show great candour, that when Ted lost the election in 1974, for some reason, apparently, he'd gone to bed early. This is the story he used to tell, maybe it's true or not, but he sort of woke up to learn the news, and it might have gone on all night, anyway, because the Labour majority was tiny, four seats or something, Wilson had won that election by... and found from his 'Times' newspaper, whatever paper he bought, that the Tories had effectively lost the election. And he said that he went up to the bathroom and he lay in the bath and he sang the 'Te Deum'. Well, it's a very odd thing to me. Nominally, then, he was still a member of the Conservative Party. But no, he was a bit cranky, it has to be said.
And then of course the... I think the poison chalice. That having refused to stand in the '74 election and played footsie with the Labour Party over timing when he was going to make his speeches and all that, which made me very unhappy at the time, I remember. I didn't think it was [unclear], I think Joe Haines was the go-between, with that strange man called Alexander who writes for the 'Daily Mail', who was a great supporter of Enoch's. And they, sort of, were the point of contact about the planning and timing and all that. But a very distasteful thing to do. But then he found himself out on a limb, and so when the chance came of becoming an Ulster Unionist MP, he took it. I don't want to be rude about the Ulster Unionists today, who hardly exist as a party, or indeed necessarily rude about them then, but I think it was Churchill who said once, about somebody who said, well, I could become an Ulster Unionist. Churchill said: 'If you touch pitch, you will be defiled'. And poor Enoch. I mean, he was… there he was with these deadbeats and no-hopers in the Ulster Unionist Party. Here was a man of his tremendous abilities. They wouldn't even make him leader. A Major Molyneaux or something was leader of the party. And I think those years, Member of Parliament for South Down, was… I think they were pretty grim years. And... he liked being back in the House of Commons, that is true, but I think that, you know, he knew that it was all over, that he had blown it. And he wasn't really even determining Ulster Unionist policy, because what he stood for was a kind of unity of the United Kingdom. He would have liked to abolish Stormont for good, have everyone represented in the Imperial Parliament, he probably called it... the old phrase. So he didn't even stand with them. He wasn't in favour of having a parliament at Stormont or this kind of thing. Didn't like it. Didn't like any of that kind of stuff. So he was basically out of sympathy with them. Then he organised one or two odd things, like all that mass resignation that took place at one stage... didn't do any good at all, just wasted a lot of time and money.
I think he was a very unhappy fellow. But of course, even more unhappy when he lost the seat in South Down, which he did eventually. And then he was like a man bereft. Oddly enough, I never really was close to Enoch, but because I used to see her socially at one or two things to do with Rab Butler and stuff, I got on well with his wife, Pamela. And it was Pamela who first said to me... I said, you know, it was after his defeat in the Commons, losing his seat... I said, 'How is Enoch?' And she said, 'He's like a man bereaved. He just doesn't know what to do', she said. I said, 'Well, couldn't they put him in the House of Lords?' She said, 'Well, I don't think Maggie Thatcher will ever do that'. And I think he wouldn't have accepted, to be fair to him. He'd been so rude about life peerages. They'd have had to come up with a hereditary peerage and offered him that. But of course, Thatcher had done that. She'd done it for Whitelaw. She'd done it for the ex-Speaker, hadn't she? Mr Speaker Thomas... Viscount Tonypandy, I think. And so she had done it before, but she wasn't going to do it for Enoch, in my view. And so he never got a peerage at all. I think that was mean. I think he should have. I mean, he was a great student of parliament. He really knew about the history of parliament. And I think not allowing him a peerage in the evening of his days was pretty mean-spirited. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/34 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_At_The_End,_Enoch_Powell_Was_A_Very_Unhappy_Fellow_(34_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, he's told us himself, and this did show great candour, that when Ted lost the election in 1974, for some reason, apparently, he'd gone to bed early. This is the story he used to tell, maybe it's true or not, but he sort of woke up to learn the news, and it might have gone on all night, anyway, because the Labour majority was tiny, four seats or something, Wilson had won that election by... and found from his 'Times' newspaper, whatever paper he bought, that the Tories had effectively lost the election. And he said that he went up to the bathroom and he lay in the bath and he sang the 'Te Deum'. Well, it's a very odd thing to me. Nominally, then, he was still a member of the Conservative Party. But no, he was a bit cranky, it has to be said.
And then of course the... I think the poison chalice. That having refused to stand in the '74 election and played footsie with the Labour Party over timing when he was going to make his speeches and all that, which made me very unhappy at the time, I remember. I didn't think it was [unclear], I think Joe Haines was the go-between, with that strange man called Alexander who writes for the 'Daily Mail', who was a great supporter of Enoch's. And they, sort of, were the point of contact about the planning and timing and all that. But a very distasteful thing to do. But then he found himself out on a limb, and so when the chance came of becoming an Ulster Unionist MP, he took it. I don't want to be rude about the Ulster Unionists today, who hardly exist as a party, or indeed necessarily rude about them then, but I think it was Churchill who said once, about somebody who said, well, I could become an Ulster Unionist. Churchill said: 'If you touch pitch, you will be defiled'. And poor Enoch. I mean, he was… there he was with these deadbeats and no-hopers in the Ulster Unionist Party. Here was a man of his tremendous abilities. They wouldn't even make him leader. A Major Molyneaux or something was leader of the party. And I think those years, Member of Parliament for South Down, was… I think they were pretty grim years. And... he liked being back in the House of Commons, that is true, but I think that, you know, he knew that it was all over, that he had blown it. And he wasn't really even determining Ulster Unionist policy, because what he stood for was a kind of unity of the United Kingdom. He would have liked to abolish Stormont for good, have everyone represented in the Imperial Parliament, he probably called it... the old phrase. So he didn't even stand with them. He wasn't in favour of having a parliament at Stormont or this kind of thing. Didn't like it. Didn't like any of that kind of stuff. So he was basically out of sympathy with them. Then he organised one or two odd things, like all that mass resignation that took place at one stage... didn't do any good at all, just wasted a lot of time and money.
I think he was a very unhappy fellow. But of course, even more unhappy when he lost the seat in South Down, which he did eventually. And then he was like a man bereft. Oddly enough, I never really was close to Enoch, but because I used to see her socially at one or two things to do with Rab Butler and stuff, I got on well with his wife, Pamela. And it was Pamela who first said to me... I said, you know, it was after his defeat in the Commons, losing his seat... I said, 'How is Enoch?' And she said, 'He's like a man bereaved. He just doesn't know what to do', she said. I said, 'Well, couldn't they put him in the House of Lords?' She said, 'Well, I don't think Maggie Thatcher will ever do that'. And I think he wouldn't have accepted, to be fair to him. He'd been so rude about life peerages. They'd have had to come up with a hereditary peerage and offered him that. But of course, Thatcher had done that. She'd done it for Whitelaw. She'd done it for the ex-Speaker, hadn't she? Mr Speaker Thomas... Viscount Tonypandy, I think. And so she had done it before, but she wasn't going to do it for Enoch, in my view. And so he never got a peerage at all. I think that was mean. I think he should have. I mean, he was a great student of parliament. He really knew about the history of parliament. And I think not allowing him a peerage in the evening of his days was pretty mean-spirited. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/34 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
6:38
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:38
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 5152
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/35 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_The_State_Of_Britain_(35_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
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- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 5152
5:07
Anthony Howard - Advantages of being a public school boy in the army (6/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:07
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 3397
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The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I joined the army in January 1956... national serviceman. Joined the East Surrey Regiment, called up to, because I suppose that was where we were living. We were living in Epsom at the time, which is Surrey. Kingston Barracks, gloomy place. And did my basic training, not at Kingston, oddly enough. This is one of the myths about national service. People go on saying it even now: ‘The great thing about national service was you learned how the other half lived, all people mingling together’. Nuts to that. Totally untrue. After I think about a week or ten days, possibly, at Kingston Barracks, all those boys who’d been to public school and it basically was that... was the divide, were plucked out and taken down to Canterbury for the Leadership Squad or the Home Counties Brigade, I think. And we weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t just the Surreys. The Royal West Kents were there and that kind of thing. And we were plucked out and just separated from the others as being potential officer material. And, you know, there were, I think, very few grammar school boys, there were, sort of, Wykehamists and Harrovians and me from Westminster and stuff, and we did our basic training basically segregated from the general run of recruits and being, sort of, held in readiness to go to the War Office Selection Board, which you went to after, I think, about 12 weeks in the army, which was a place called Barton Stacey in Hampshire. And you were, sort of, confronted by a quite grand, sort of, dining area. Well, they see if you can handle a knife and a fork and that kind of thing. And then there was this awful kind of thing with planks, and, sort of... not really an assault course, but sort of putting things together: barrels across rivers and the rest of it. I was absolutely hopeless at that kind of thing, no good at all. But I think I decided early on that the thing to do was to look as if you were in charge and to shout out, ‘Come on number five, pull yourself together’, kind of thing.
And so I somehow managed to get through the War Office Selection Board, which was actually a miracle because I had written that… one of the… you had to write an essay, among other things and I wrote an essay about the colour bar, I think, saying, you know, I was against it in a, sort of, typical wet liberal way, and there was a major in the Grenadiers and he had this essay in front of him and I went into this interview with him and he said, ‘Sit down, Howard, sit down'. And I sat down. He said, ‘I want to put something to you'. He said, ‘You’re in church, your sister’s coming up the aisle and there’s a black man waiting for her at the altar. What are you going to do about it?’ I said, ‘Well, I won’t do anything about it’. He said, ‘You won’t do anything about it?’ And so I thought I’d blown it all at that point but luckily I think I gave a talk on something. You had to give a five-minute lecturette or something and that went reasonably well. So anyway, I came out of Eaton Hall... I came out of Wasby and then I had to go back to Kingston Barracks, not to Canterbury, where I was made... because I was waiting for a vacancy to occur at the officer cadet school at Eaton Hall... and I then had the most power I had in the army, I think. They made me post corporal and that meant that I saw everyone’s letters. And on the very first day, I realised what my power was, because the regimental sergeant major, a terrifying man who, sort of, frightened the life out of me in the ten days I was there before, said, ‘Come in laddie. And I want to say to you, laddie, if you see a letter with that writing on it, it comes straight to me in the orderly room, you understand? It doesn’t go to the married quarters'. And I thought, whoa, I know what that was about. And so from that moment on, I lived a charmed life, really. And it wasn’t only him but I think everyone was slightly, sort of the same, you know. But it was a very easy, cushy number. I had to go down once a week, I think, to turn the… there was a book of remembrance in the Kingston Parish Church and one of my duties was to go down there and turn the page of this book and undo the glass case. It was a very cushy number. [...]
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https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Advantages_Of_Being_A_Public_School_Boy_In_The_Army_(6_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I joined the army in January 1956... national serviceman. Joined the East Surrey Regiment, called up to, because I suppose that was where we were living. We were living in Epsom at the time, which is Surrey. Kingston Barracks, gloomy place. And did my basic training, not at Kingston, oddly enough. This is one of the myths about national service. People go on saying it even now: ‘The great thing about national service was you learned how the other half lived, all people mingling together’. Nuts to that. Totally untrue. After I think about a week or ten days, possibly, at Kingston Barracks, all those boys who’d been to public school and it basically was that... was the divide, were plucked out and taken down to Canterbury for the Leadership Squad or the Home Counties Brigade, I think. And we weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t just the Surreys. The Royal West Kents were there and that kind of thing. And we were plucked out and just separated from the others as being potential officer material. And, you know, there were, I think, very few grammar school boys, there were, sort of, Wykehamists and Harrovians and me from Westminster and stuff, and we did our basic training basically segregated from the general run of recruits and being, sort of, held in readiness to go to the War Office Selection Board, which you went to after, I think, about 12 weeks in the army, which was a place called Barton Stacey in Hampshire. And you were, sort of, confronted by a quite grand, sort of, dining area. Well, they see if you can handle a knife and a fork and that kind of thing. And then there was this awful kind of thing with planks, and, sort of... not really an assault course, but sort of putting things together: barrels across rivers and the rest of it. I was absolutely hopeless at that kind of thing, no good at all. But I think I decided early on that the thing to do was to look as if you were in charge and to shout out, ‘Come on number five, pull yourself together’, kind of thing.
And so I somehow managed to get through the War Office Selection Board, which was actually a miracle because I had written that… one of the… you had to write an essay, among other things and I wrote an essay about the colour bar, I think, saying, you know, I was against it in a, sort of, typical wet liberal way, and there was a major in the Grenadiers and he had this essay in front of him and I went into this interview with him and he said, ‘Sit down, Howard, sit down'. And I sat down. He said, ‘I want to put something to you'. He said, ‘You’re in church, your sister’s coming up the aisle and there’s a black man waiting for her at the altar. What are you going to do about it?’ I said, ‘Well, I won’t do anything about it’. He said, ‘You won’t do anything about it?’ And so I thought I’d blown it all at that point but luckily I think I gave a talk on something. You had to give a five-minute lecturette or something and that went reasonably well. So anyway, I came out of Eaton Hall... I came out of Wasby and then I had to go back to Kingston Barracks, not to Canterbury, where I was made... because I was waiting for a vacancy to occur at the officer cadet school at Eaton Hall... and I then had the most power I had in the army, I think. They made me post corporal and that meant that I saw everyone’s letters. And on the very first day, I realised what my power was, because the regimental sergeant major, a terrifying man who, sort of, frightened the life out of me in the ten days I was there before, said, ‘Come in laddie. And I want to say to you, laddie, if you see a letter with that writing on it, it comes straight to me in the orderly room, you understand? It doesn’t go to the married quarters'. And I thought, whoa, I know what that was about. And so from that moment on, I lived a charmed life, really. And it wasn’t only him but I think everyone was slightly, sort of the same, you know. But it was a very easy, cushy number. I had to go down once a week, I think, to turn the… there was a book of remembrance in the Kingston Parish Church and one of my duties was to go down there and turn the page of this book and undo the glass case. It was a very cushy number. [...]
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- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 3397
6:24
Anthony Howard - Beginnings (1/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:24
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 5294
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The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I was born in 1934... the 12th of February 1934, in, I think, a flat in Kensington - 24 Cheniston Gardens, which is off Kensington High Street. My dad was, at the time, a priest in charge of Christ Church, Victoria Road. He was an Anglican clergyman and it was a very posh neighbourhood in those days, sort of full of major generals and peers and all that kind of thing, and he wasn't vicar of it because the church came under the wing of St Mary Abbots, the main church in Kensington but he was curate in charge or priest in charge. And, I mean, such was it that my mum always told me (I don't know whether it's true) that when I was born, they got 350 woolly coats, which were absolutely useless, had to be given away, that the little baby could wear. But it was that kind of very much upper-class, Edwardian era, which lasted in places like Kensington much longer than people think. And that's where I spent the first two years of my life. Can't remember it at all, clearly, and then in 1936, we moved to Highgate, where my dad was made vicar of Highgate at St Michael's Church there and that's where, I suppose, my formative years were spent, the next ten years indeed, until 1946, until after the war. And we lived, I think, in a not very nice vicarage, which he'd actually had to acquire because the old vicarage was fallen down in Southwood Lane and I went first of all to various, sort of, kindergarten schools. And then, in about 1942 or thereabouts, I went to Highgate Junior School, which was the junior school of Highgate, which was a minor public school, I suppose, but perfectly adequate, and stayed there until '46 when my father moved again to Kensington and to St Peter's, Cranley Gardens, now defunct, or now not… I think it's now sort of taken over by the… oh, what are they called? I don't know. But it's no longer a Church of England church. And we were there for four years and then I went to school at Westminster, which was on the tube. And... I was a day boy at first, became a boarder by the end. That was at my education, partly because… I think this was very odd, they decided to send my sister away to school at Cheltenham Ladies' College and I was left at home on my tod as a boy, really rather lonely. And it became clear to me in time that if you wanted to make progress and, sort of, be in school plays and in, sort of, house teams and stuff, it wasn't much good leaving the school at five o'clock and therefore I agitated, and goodness knows how they afforded it, and I became a boarder. I imagine it must have been about 1948, '49, or something and stayed at Westminster until I went up to Oxford in 1952, to Christ Church. And that was, I suppose… oh it wasn't the end of my education, no, because I decided I wanted to be a barrister, and so I started, sort of… I read law at Oxford, great mistake, very sterile study law, very sterile academic study, anyway. And went… sort of, to eat dinners, you had to do to qualify to be a barrister. And I never, of course, went to the bar. But I was called. I was called to the bar. And I can still sign passports saying, barrister-at-law, that kind of thing. But I did practice a bit in the army, as a defending officer, because you had to do national service in those days. And I… I think they got to know, in the battalion, which was with the Royal Fusiliers, they got to know that Mr Howard is a trained barrister and therefore all the boys on sort of AWOL charges, absence without leave and that kind of thing, said, 'I'll have Mr Howard as my defending officer'. I was only a second lieutenant, but I did rather enjoy it, because it meant that you could stand up before this court-martial and say to your own company commander: 'Major Derkin, would you describe yourself as an experienced officer?' [He said] 'I think I may do that!' [I said] 'I see. Will you now look at this document, which is your annual report on Corporal Hayes Rosario, and compare it with what you just told the court, that he was a thoroughly unreliable NCO? You write here he was an ideal NCO. How do you reconcile those two?' It didn't do me any good in the officer's mess. They loathed it. But I did enjoy it, I think. And that was just two years. And when I came out of the army, I no longer wanted to be a barrister and that was partly because the army had turned me into a journalist. [...]
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https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Beginnings_(1_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I was born in 1934... the 12th of February 1934, in, I think, a flat in Kensington - 24 Cheniston Gardens, which is off Kensington High Street. My dad was, at the time, a priest in charge of Christ Church, Victoria Road. He was an Anglican clergyman and it was a very posh neighbourhood in those days, sort of full of major generals and peers and all that kind of thing, and he wasn't vicar of it because the church came under the wing of St Mary Abbots, the main church in Kensington but he was curate in charge or priest in charge. And, I mean, such was it that my mum always told me (I don't know whether it's true) that when I was born, they got 350 woolly coats, which were absolutely useless, had to be given away, that the little baby could wear. But it was that kind of very much upper-class, Edwardian era, which lasted in places like Kensington much longer than people think. And that's where I spent the first two years of my life. Can't remember it at all, clearly, and then in 1936, we moved to Highgate, where my dad was made vicar of Highgate at St Michael's Church there and that's where, I suppose, my formative years were spent, the next ten years indeed, until 1946, until after the war. And we lived, I think, in a not very nice vicarage, which he'd actually had to acquire because the old vicarage was fallen down in Southwood Lane and I went first of all to various, sort of, kindergarten schools. And then, in about 1942 or thereabouts, I went to Highgate Junior School, which was the junior school of Highgate, which was a minor public school, I suppose, but perfectly adequate, and stayed there until '46 when my father moved again to Kensington and to St Peter's, Cranley Gardens, now defunct, or now not… I think it's now sort of taken over by the… oh, what are they called? I don't know. But it's no longer a Church of England church. And we were there for four years and then I went to school at Westminster, which was on the tube. And... I was a day boy at first, became a boarder by the end. That was at my education, partly because… I think this was very odd, they decided to send my sister away to school at Cheltenham Ladies' College and I was left at home on my tod as a boy, really rather lonely. And it became clear to me in time that if you wanted to make progress and, sort of, be in school plays and in, sort of, house teams and stuff, it wasn't much good leaving the school at five o'clock and therefore I agitated, and goodness knows how they afforded it, and I became a boarder. I imagine it must have been about 1948, '49, or something and stayed at Westminster until I went up to Oxford in 1952, to Christ Church. And that was, I suppose… oh it wasn't the end of my education, no, because I decided I wanted to be a barrister, and so I started, sort of… I read law at Oxford, great mistake, very sterile study law, very sterile academic study, anyway. And went… sort of, to eat dinners, you had to do to qualify to be a barrister. And I never, of course, went to the bar. But I was called. I was called to the bar. And I can still sign passports saying, barrister-at-law, that kind of thing. But I did practice a bit in the army, as a defending officer, because you had to do national service in those days. And I… I think they got to know, in the battalion, which was with the Royal Fusiliers, they got to know that Mr Howard is a trained barrister and therefore all the boys on sort of AWOL charges, absence without leave and that kind of thing, said, 'I'll have Mr Howard as my defending officer'. I was only a second lieutenant, but I did rather enjoy it, because it meant that you could stand up before this court-martial and say to your own company commander: 'Major Derkin, would you describe yourself as an experienced officer?' [He said] 'I think I may do that!' [I said] 'I see. Will you now look at this document, which is your annual report on Corporal Hayes Rosario, and compare it with what you just told the court, that he was a thoroughly unreliable NCO? You write here he was an ideal NCO. How do you reconcile those two?' It didn't do me any good in the officer's mess. They loathed it. But I did enjoy it, I think. And that was just two years. And when I came out of the army, I no longer wanted to be a barrister and that was partly because the army had turned me into a journalist. [...]
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- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 5294
5:12
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:12
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 16375
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) ...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Enoch_Powell_'Had_The_Air_Of_The_Fanatic'_(33_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 16375
2:48
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:48
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 8377
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Tony_Blair_A_Tory_In_Disguise_(31_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 8377
5:23
Anthony Howard - Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:23
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 19088
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: To be a successful politician, it’s very difficult to say what you need. I mean, I think there’s no point in being a politician if you are not able to perform. I.e., if you’re hopeless as a speaker, forget about being a politician. If you are no good as a debater, forget about it. If you have complete kind of nondescript qualities, forget about it. I’ve said all that, and what do I now have to say?
Who was the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th century? Clement Attlee. Attlee had no kind of, sort of, you know, messianic qualities about him at all. He was a very poor speaker, he sounded as if he was sort of like a country bank manager, he couldn’t… he had no sense of command. I remember him coming to the Oxford Union once, and he made a long speech and the last words of it were, 'All men are brothers'. And he sat down. And it was hopeless, hopeless. His wife had the sense to go to the cinema while he was speaking, and only joined up with him afterwards. He was a very, very poor speaker. Yet, there he was. And in the politicians’ trade union, he is very highly regarded. People like Harold Macmillan thought he was a wonderful Prime Minister. And I think he was very good at being Prime Minister.
When the day he was elected… I may have told this story already, but Dalton wrote in his diary that night, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And the little mouse did lead them, and a very effective mouse he became.
So having said that, I mean I think I’m broadly right, but you have to make exceptions. Now how much is politics a performing art? I think probably I incline to overrate the performing side of it, but it seems to me to be a successful politician, you’ve got to be a bit of an actor. You’ve got to be able to lay on a performance. Now other people would say, no, no, what matters is intellectual firepower, and I think that does matter. You’ve got to be able to understand what’s going on, particularly in this day and age. You know, if you’re Minister of Defence or if you’re Chancellor of the Exchequer, you’ve got to understand what all these things are about, and they’re quite complicated. So intellectual firepower does come into it. But I think more important, myself, because there have been a lot of politicians with very little brain, but quite successful public careers behind them, and a lot of politicians with very big brains who’ve gone nowhere. Keith Joseph, poor old Keith Joseph, you know, great intellectual, but no good as a politician, in my view. Dick Crossman, to some extent, a very formidable intellect, but a failed politician, really.
So I don’t think intellect is as important, myself, as showmanship, as I might call it rudely. I think that’s all important, and of course if you want to go into public life, you must be a bit of an extrovert. It really won’t do if you’re shy and diffident and, you know, backing away from the limelight. None of that stuff will work if you want to go and be a public figure. So I’m amazed at the number of politicians there are who seem to me ill-equipped by nature for the trade they’ve chosen. And sometimes, they don’t do all that badly. But, you know, the really successful politicians, it seems to me, whether you choose Lloyd George or whether you choose Michael Heseltine or whether you choose Joseph Chamberlain, they’ve all been a bit of a showman, really, and that is an adequate, or an integral, part of the equipment of the successful politician.
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/20 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Clement_Attlee_The_Greatest_Prime_Minister_Of_20Th_Century_(20_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: To be a successful politician, it’s very difficult to say what you need. I mean, I think there’s no point in being a politician if you are not able to perform. I.e., if you’re hopeless as a speaker, forget about being a politician. If you are no good as a debater, forget about it. If you have complete kind of nondescript qualities, forget about it. I’ve said all that, and what do I now have to say?
Who was the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th century? Clement Attlee. Attlee had no kind of, sort of, you know, messianic qualities about him at all. He was a very poor speaker, he sounded as if he was sort of like a country bank manager, he couldn’t… he had no sense of command. I remember him coming to the Oxford Union once, and he made a long speech and the last words of it were, 'All men are brothers'. And he sat down. And it was hopeless, hopeless. His wife had the sense to go to the cinema while he was speaking, and only joined up with him afterwards. He was a very, very poor speaker. Yet, there he was. And in the politicians’ trade union, he is very highly regarded. People like Harold Macmillan thought he was a wonderful Prime Minister. And I think he was very good at being Prime Minister.
When the day he was elected… I may have told this story already, but Dalton wrote in his diary that night, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And the little mouse did lead them, and a very effective mouse he became.
So having said that, I mean I think I’m broadly right, but you have to make exceptions. Now how much is politics a performing art? I think probably I incline to overrate the performing side of it, but it seems to me to be a successful politician, you’ve got to be a bit of an actor. You’ve got to be able to lay on a performance. Now other people would say, no, no, what matters is intellectual firepower, and I think that does matter. You’ve got to be able to understand what’s going on, particularly in this day and age. You know, if you’re Minister of Defence or if you’re Chancellor of the Exchequer, you’ve got to understand what all these things are about, and they’re quite complicated. So intellectual firepower does come into it. But I think more important, myself, because there have been a lot of politicians with very little brain, but quite successful public careers behind them, and a lot of politicians with very big brains who’ve gone nowhere. Keith Joseph, poor old Keith Joseph, you know, great intellectual, but no good as a politician, in my view. Dick Crossman, to some extent, a very formidable intellect, but a failed politician, really.
So I don’t think intellect is as important, myself, as showmanship, as I might call it rudely. I think that’s all important, and of course if you want to go into public life, you must be a bit of an extrovert. It really won’t do if you’re shy and diffident and, you know, backing away from the limelight. None of that stuff will work if you want to go and be a public figure. So I’m amazed at the number of politicians there are who seem to me ill-equipped by nature for the trade they’ve chosen. And sometimes, they don’t do all that badly. But, you know, the really successful politicians, it seems to me, whether you choose Lloyd George or whether you choose Michael Heseltine or whether you choose Joseph Chamberlain, they’ve all been a bit of a showman, really, and that is an adequate, or an integral, part of the equipment of the successful politician.
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/20 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 19088
6:20
Anthony Howard - What went wrong for Michael Heseltine? (26/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:20
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 12499
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The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: What went wrong? Well, what went wrong, I suppose, was Margaret Thatcher. He and she never got on. I think partly Michael's fault. Michael is sufficiently old-fashioned to have hated the idea of having a woman boss. In that sense, he is like Soames Forsyte, as I mentioned. And therefore, the chemistry never worked. On the whole, she liked sort of good-looking men, but she didn't like Michael. And there came the great fall-out in 1986 over Westland. He resigned from the government. And of course, the great achievement, and I don't think people pay enough to this… that every other single person who fell out with Margaret and resigned, just sort of went into oblivion.
Michael was able, between those years, 1986, when he resigned, and 1990, when he ran against her for leadership, to keep himself in business. He flogged himself every Friday night around the, sort of, rubber chicken circuit. He went to ever constituency that would invite him. He kept his name in the frame. When people drew up odds as to who would be the next Prime Minister, he was usually right up there in the front. And that was, for a backbench MP, a very considerable achievement. And of course, one of the reasons why he could do it was because he was a very untypical member of parliament of his day and age, that he had made his fortune, and it had become a fortune again, before he went into the House of Commons. That meant he could afford to have a staff, he could afford to have a chauffeur. I mean, the driver who came with him out of the government service, is still with him, and, you know, not many MPs can be able to afford to say to their driver when they'd been a minister, 'Okay, George, are you going to come with me? I'll pay you from now on'. But Michael could do all that, and that was a great help, having that sort of independence of, you know, private wealth, which he'd all made himself, gave him.
So he did it. And he, I think, really did think, when it came to 1990, that he was in with a real chance. And the fact is, he would have become Prime Minister. That if the second ballot had been between Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine… when in the first ballot, she got 204 votes, he got 152, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that he would have won and she would have been defeated. Because she knew that, and all her cabinet colleagues knew that, that they forced her to stand down, and she really was arm-locked into standing down.
Then, of course, John Major came on the scene and that, for a number of Tory MPs, was enough. There'd been a change and therefore, when Major and Douglas Hurd threw their hats into the ring, it was really all over for Michael. He was, that day, driving to plant a tree, I think in the zoo, when this, sort of, bombshell announcement came, that Margaret Thatcher was giving up and was resigning. I think I once asked him, I said, you know, 'Did you know, from that moment on?' And he said, 'Yeah, I knew. I knew'. And he went through with it, he sort of dug up the earth, put the tree... planted it, but it must have been a pretty gruesome moment, and I think he was enough of a professional politician to know that his chances of beating Major, as opposed to beating Thatcher, were pretty slight. And as it was, his vote went down and he got about 130-odd votes, Major got 180 votes, Douglas Hurd got, sort of, 59 or 60 or something, but it was clear-cut enough for there not to be a second rerun, although technically Major hadn't met the requirements, which were... you know 15% majority and all that kind of thing. Nonetheless, it was clear that Major had got home. It was, of course, a tremendous injustice. I mean, I say nothing against John Major, very nice man. But any idea that Major has the talent that Michael has got, any idea that, you know, he was the kind of public powerful figure that Michael Heseltine was, was absolute nonsense. And I'm afraid the Tory party cut off its nose to spite its face, and was electing Major because they couldn't forgive the regicide, the person who plunged the dagger into the previous leader. They made a terrible mistake. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/26 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_What_Went_Wrong_For_Michael_Heseltine_(26_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: What went wrong? Well, what went wrong, I suppose, was Margaret Thatcher. He and she never got on. I think partly Michael's fault. Michael is sufficiently old-fashioned to have hated the idea of having a woman boss. In that sense, he is like Soames Forsyte, as I mentioned. And therefore, the chemistry never worked. On the whole, she liked sort of good-looking men, but she didn't like Michael. And there came the great fall-out in 1986 over Westland. He resigned from the government. And of course, the great achievement, and I don't think people pay enough to this… that every other single person who fell out with Margaret and resigned, just sort of went into oblivion.
Michael was able, between those years, 1986, when he resigned, and 1990, when he ran against her for leadership, to keep himself in business. He flogged himself every Friday night around the, sort of, rubber chicken circuit. He went to ever constituency that would invite him. He kept his name in the frame. When people drew up odds as to who would be the next Prime Minister, he was usually right up there in the front. And that was, for a backbench MP, a very considerable achievement. And of course, one of the reasons why he could do it was because he was a very untypical member of parliament of his day and age, that he had made his fortune, and it had become a fortune again, before he went into the House of Commons. That meant he could afford to have a staff, he could afford to have a chauffeur. I mean, the driver who came with him out of the government service, is still with him, and, you know, not many MPs can be able to afford to say to their driver when they'd been a minister, 'Okay, George, are you going to come with me? I'll pay you from now on'. But Michael could do all that, and that was a great help, having that sort of independence of, you know, private wealth, which he'd all made himself, gave him.
So he did it. And he, I think, really did think, when it came to 1990, that he was in with a real chance. And the fact is, he would have become Prime Minister. That if the second ballot had been between Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine… when in the first ballot, she got 204 votes, he got 152, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that he would have won and she would have been defeated. Because she knew that, and all her cabinet colleagues knew that, that they forced her to stand down, and she really was arm-locked into standing down.
Then, of course, John Major came on the scene and that, for a number of Tory MPs, was enough. There'd been a change and therefore, when Major and Douglas Hurd threw their hats into the ring, it was really all over for Michael. He was, that day, driving to plant a tree, I think in the zoo, when this, sort of, bombshell announcement came, that Margaret Thatcher was giving up and was resigning. I think I once asked him, I said, you know, 'Did you know, from that moment on?' And he said, 'Yeah, I knew. I knew'. And he went through with it, he sort of dug up the earth, put the tree... planted it, but it must have been a pretty gruesome moment, and I think he was enough of a professional politician to know that his chances of beating Major, as opposed to beating Thatcher, were pretty slight. And as it was, his vote went down and he got about 130-odd votes, Major got 180 votes, Douglas Hurd got, sort of, 59 or 60 or something, but it was clear-cut enough for there not to be a second rerun, although technically Major hadn't met the requirements, which were... you know 15% majority and all that kind of thing. Nonetheless, it was clear that Major had got home. It was, of course, a tremendous injustice. I mean, I say nothing against John Major, very nice man. But any idea that Major has the talent that Michael has got, any idea that, you know, he was the kind of public powerful figure that Michael Heseltine was, was absolute nonsense. And I'm afraid the Tory party cut off its nose to spite its face, and was electing Major because they couldn't forgive the regicide, the person who plunged the dagger into the previous leader. They made a terrible mistake. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/26 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 12499
3:48
Anthony Howard - My appearance on 'Desert Island Discs' was disappointing (39/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:48
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 3176
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I think I was a great disappointment with that, with Sue Lawley, because she was doing it when I was doing it. And I think I asked for… I suppose I was influenced by having been in the army, and I asked for a camp bed (officers for the use of), which is what you have in the army. And I thought that rather than lie on the ground, this camp bed, and I think I asked also for a mosquito net, because that came with the camp bed, or you could have it added. And I thought if I was on this desert island, that would do. But I think that was really the influence of national service. And I wouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't been a national serviceman. Otherwise, I can't remember much about the programme. What you have to do, I think, if you do it, is you have to pace yourself. You have to say, take bits of music that correspond with the periods of your life, and I think I managed to do that, otherwise I would… I'm not terribly musical, so I wasn't an ideal choice, and I had things, you know, rather hackneyed things like, well, I don't know, the opera with some drinking song from whatever it is. Can't even remember what opera it is. But my wife was some help with it. She's much more musical than I am. But it was pretty…
Oh, I had a lot of speech, including a Nye Bevan speech, which I was delighted to put in. And they thought it was too short, but they let me have it. And I think I had, I had that other American… 'When You Are Old And Grey'. Dear, dear, what is his name? Plays the piano and twiddles, but that was almost speech. But it wasn't high classical music much, no. I mean, it had things even like 'Vivat Regina!', because having been at Westminster school, and that being the sort of coronation thing we sung, shouted out by the Queen's scholars. So we had all sorts of odd things. I enjoyed doing it. They were quite fun. I was quite old by the time I did it. I think I was… I'd certainly left 'The Times' by the time I did it, I think. Not giving up the columns, I'd left 'The Times' full-time, because I didn't spend.... you know, I spent six years in the Elysian Fields, rowing people across the Styx to their, sort of, obituary notices.
Odd job, that, but a job I quite enjoyed. Very much the hinge of journalism and history, being obits editor, and admittedly, it's an old man's job, because you… only if you're old can you, sort of, remember enough about the people who've died, but it was very much away from the mainstream of journalism, and I did it, I think, between 1993 and 1999, that's right. And a small staff, sort of three or four people, all, sort of, each day putting out the slab and laying out people on it. But I didn't find it unrewarding, and obits had a great vogue at one time. They suddenly became very fashionable. I think they've gone off a bit now, but for a period, mainly because of The Independent, I think, and because 'The Telegraph', under Montgomery Massinberd did, sort of, produce a new kind of art form, basically. He's dead now, poor chap. But I think we were fighting back against 'The Telegraph', that's one reason why I was hired to do it, because 'The Times' realised that they were being left standing by these new witty, funny notices that appeared in 'The Daily Telegraph', which it used not to do obits at all. And it's quite a feat to get them up to the standard they did, really, only starting in 1986, I think, whereas 'The Times' has done them for… well, not as long as people think. I think 'The Times' regular obits page started about 1920, so it hasn't even been going 100 years yet. But they did occasional pieces before, but that was sort of the death of the Duke of Wellingon, all that kind of thing, you know, the one-day specials.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_My_Appearance_On_'Desert_Island_Discs'_Was_Disappointing_(39_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I think I was a great disappointment with that, with Sue Lawley, because she was doing it when I was doing it. And I think I asked for… I suppose I was influenced by having been in the army, and I asked for a camp bed (officers for the use of), which is what you have in the army. And I thought that rather than lie on the ground, this camp bed, and I think I asked also for a mosquito net, because that came with the camp bed, or you could have it added. And I thought if I was on this desert island, that would do. But I think that was really the influence of national service. And I wouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't been a national serviceman. Otherwise, I can't remember much about the programme. What you have to do, I think, if you do it, is you have to pace yourself. You have to say, take bits of music that correspond with the periods of your life, and I think I managed to do that, otherwise I would… I'm not terribly musical, so I wasn't an ideal choice, and I had things, you know, rather hackneyed things like, well, I don't know, the opera with some drinking song from whatever it is. Can't even remember what opera it is. But my wife was some help with it. She's much more musical than I am. But it was pretty…
Oh, I had a lot of speech, including a Nye Bevan speech, which I was delighted to put in. And they thought it was too short, but they let me have it. And I think I had, I had that other American… 'When You Are Old And Grey'. Dear, dear, what is his name? Plays the piano and twiddles, but that was almost speech. But it wasn't high classical music much, no. I mean, it had things even like 'Vivat Regina!', because having been at Westminster school, and that being the sort of coronation thing we sung, shouted out by the Queen's scholars. So we had all sorts of odd things. I enjoyed doing it. They were quite fun. I was quite old by the time I did it. I think I was… I'd certainly left 'The Times' by the time I did it, I think. Not giving up the columns, I'd left 'The Times' full-time, because I didn't spend.... you know, I spent six years in the Elysian Fields, rowing people across the Styx to their, sort of, obituary notices.
Odd job, that, but a job I quite enjoyed. Very much the hinge of journalism and history, being obits editor, and admittedly, it's an old man's job, because you… only if you're old can you, sort of, remember enough about the people who've died, but it was very much away from the mainstream of journalism, and I did it, I think, between 1993 and 1999, that's right. And a small staff, sort of three or four people, all, sort of, each day putting out the slab and laying out people on it. But I didn't find it unrewarding, and obits had a great vogue at one time. They suddenly became very fashionable. I think they've gone off a bit now, but for a period, mainly because of The Independent, I think, and because 'The Telegraph', under Montgomery Massinberd did, sort of, produce a new kind of art form, basically. He's dead now, poor chap. But I think we were fighting back against 'The Telegraph', that's one reason why I was hired to do it, because 'The Times' realised that they were being left standing by these new witty, funny notices that appeared in 'The Daily Telegraph', which it used not to do obits at all. And it's quite a feat to get them up to the standard they did, really, only starting in 1986, I think, whereas 'The Times' has done them for… well, not as long as people think. I think 'The Times' regular obits page started about 1920, so it hasn't even been going 100 years yet. But they did occasional pieces before, but that was sort of the death of the Duke of Wellingon, all that kind of thing, you know, the one-day specials.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 3176
6:59
Anthony Howard - Robin Cook was not leadership material (29/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:59
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 9143
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The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Robin Cook was a really extremely formidable parliamentarian, a very good speaker. Very incisive and, when in opposition, some of those speeches he made were really terrific. He wasn’t an easy man. When I was editor of the 'New Statesman', I had to have somebody… or you had to have... a sort of MP who’d come into your Friday conferences and keep you informed on what was going on. And the first MP I asked, oddly enough, we’re now talking 1972, and he’d just become a member of parliament, was Neil Kinnock. And Neil was a director of 'Tribune'. He said he was a director of 'Tribune', and I said, 'Well, that is an impediment and I don’t think I could really have that'. And so I don’t know… so I then had Eric Heffer in, before Robin Cook. And Eric became a member of the government in '74, and Robin Cook was elected in '74, and he became the 'New Statesman', as it were, tame labour MP. And he came, really quite religiously, to every Friday conference we had. We always had a, sort of, policy, kind of planning-ahead conference on Friday, not so much for detail in the paper, but kind of the issues that we should be bearing in mind, should be addressing.
And he came to that. He was always very late. He was always a bit chaotic, I thought. He’d sort of arrive half an hour late, that kind of thing. And he was distinctly, in manner, pedagogic, and I didn’t find him immediately attractive at all. But he did the job and he wrote articles for us. He was always, I always thought, a bit sort of cavalier that… I remember once, he wrote a piece and I got a letter in, sort of, number of corrections and stuff. And I showed it to him, probably at the Friday conference, and said, 'What am I to do about this, Robin?' And he said, 'Oh, junk it... bin it. It’s ridiculous. Trivial point'. So I said, 'Well, I can’t do that. I mean, is he right or is he wrong?' He said, 'Oh, well, it doesn’t matter'. And I was a bit taken aback by that, that, you know, if somebody catches you out, you have to actually say, well, he’s right, you'd better put it in the paper and I’ll put at the bottom, sorry, got it wrong, or something. But he… I did put it in the paper, but he wasn’t at all pleased, and thought it should just be ignored. So he was a difficult man.
I had met him first when he was a lecturer at Edinburgh University, and I’d gone up to talk to the Labour Club there or something. That’s when I first met him. He was then a prospective candidate. And he seemed to me, even in those days, rather like a garden gnome, but he was a good speaker. And of course, I think his tragedy was that if he had, sort of, had the bearing and looks and the appearance of, say, Tony Blair, he would have become leader of the party. The only reason why he was always, sort of, not considered seriously, was because he had this sort of red beard and he was rather small and he had a slightly, sort of, bad voice, too, for politics. Slightly high-pitched and… but as I say, he was a very effective orator. But I think he was always a bit miffed, because after all, he’d gone to the House of Commons nine years before Tony Blair. Tony Blair wasn’t elected until 1983. Robin Cook was elected 1974. So he shouldn’t even have been considered leadership material. It must have been a bit hurtful.
I don’t know what his relations were like with Tony Blair. Of course, his very brave resignation over Iraq obviously poisoned them, but he was right about that, and Blair was wrong. I don’t think they were ever close. Blair admired his skill as a speaker, and certainly sent him a hero-gram in that arms… was it? was the Arms for Iraq scandal, you know, the great report where he made his great speech for the opposition frontbench. And he used… I think he used to have it on his wall in his office, this, sort of hero-gram that Blair sent him for that performance, which was remarkable. But I don’t think they were ever close. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/29 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Robin_Cook_Was_Not_Leadership_Material_(29_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Robin Cook was a really extremely formidable parliamentarian, a very good speaker. Very incisive and, when in opposition, some of those speeches he made were really terrific. He wasn’t an easy man. When I was editor of the 'New Statesman', I had to have somebody… or you had to have... a sort of MP who’d come into your Friday conferences and keep you informed on what was going on. And the first MP I asked, oddly enough, we’re now talking 1972, and he’d just become a member of parliament, was Neil Kinnock. And Neil was a director of 'Tribune'. He said he was a director of 'Tribune', and I said, 'Well, that is an impediment and I don’t think I could really have that'. And so I don’t know… so I then had Eric Heffer in, before Robin Cook. And Eric became a member of the government in '74, and Robin Cook was elected in '74, and he became the 'New Statesman', as it were, tame labour MP. And he came, really quite religiously, to every Friday conference we had. We always had a, sort of, policy, kind of planning-ahead conference on Friday, not so much for detail in the paper, but kind of the issues that we should be bearing in mind, should be addressing.
And he came to that. He was always very late. He was always a bit chaotic, I thought. He’d sort of arrive half an hour late, that kind of thing. And he was distinctly, in manner, pedagogic, and I didn’t find him immediately attractive at all. But he did the job and he wrote articles for us. He was always, I always thought, a bit sort of cavalier that… I remember once, he wrote a piece and I got a letter in, sort of, number of corrections and stuff. And I showed it to him, probably at the Friday conference, and said, 'What am I to do about this, Robin?' And he said, 'Oh, junk it... bin it. It’s ridiculous. Trivial point'. So I said, 'Well, I can’t do that. I mean, is he right or is he wrong?' He said, 'Oh, well, it doesn’t matter'. And I was a bit taken aback by that, that, you know, if somebody catches you out, you have to actually say, well, he’s right, you'd better put it in the paper and I’ll put at the bottom, sorry, got it wrong, or something. But he… I did put it in the paper, but he wasn’t at all pleased, and thought it should just be ignored. So he was a difficult man.
I had met him first when he was a lecturer at Edinburgh University, and I’d gone up to talk to the Labour Club there or something. That’s when I first met him. He was then a prospective candidate. And he seemed to me, even in those days, rather like a garden gnome, but he was a good speaker. And of course, I think his tragedy was that if he had, sort of, had the bearing and looks and the appearance of, say, Tony Blair, he would have become leader of the party. The only reason why he was always, sort of, not considered seriously, was because he had this sort of red beard and he was rather small and he had a slightly, sort of, bad voice, too, for politics. Slightly high-pitched and… but as I say, he was a very effective orator. But I think he was always a bit miffed, because after all, he’d gone to the House of Commons nine years before Tony Blair. Tony Blair wasn’t elected until 1983. Robin Cook was elected 1974. So he shouldn’t even have been considered leadership material. It must have been a bit hurtful.
I don’t know what his relations were like with Tony Blair. Of course, his very brave resignation over Iraq obviously poisoned them, but he was right about that, and Blair was wrong. I don’t think they were ever close. Blair admired his skill as a speaker, and certainly sent him a hero-gram in that arms… was it? was the Arms for Iraq scandal, you know, the great report where he made his great speech for the opposition frontbench. And he used… I think he used to have it on his wall in his office, this, sort of hero-gram that Blair sent him for that performance, which was remarkable. But I don’t think they were ever close. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/29 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 9143
-
Anthony Howard - Journalists admire politicians who make a splash and cut a dash (19/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: It’s very hard, isn’t it? I mean, the politicians journalists admire are all those who make a splash and cut a dash. Not necessarily does that make you admired by your own colleagues. I mean, the last person that one would think was in any way glamorous was Mr Attlee, who presided over the Labour government from '45 to '51. Mo...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Never meeting Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister (28/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: So as I say, I never saw her in all the time she was Prime Minister, I never saw her. She would… I mean, I saw her in the House of Commons, but I never had any private interview or anything. She was very vindictive, as a matter of fact. For example, no reason why she should have asked me, but Donald Trelford, who was editor of...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though? I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the pre...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I th...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Being fascinated by politics for a long time (13/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I find it very hard to know why I first became interested in politics. My father and mother had no interest in politics, really. I think my father was a liberal conservative, he was entirely opposed to capital punishment and things like that. He thought the whole Suez expedition in 1956, which I was engaged in as a national se...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Two masters at school who had enormous influence on me (2/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: There were two masters at school who had enormous influence on me. One was not an intellectual at all but when I went to Westminster in 1946, he was my first form master. His name was Stephen Lushington. He’s still alive, aged 90+ and he taught English and he’d been… he was a very colourful figure. He’d been in the army during...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade (22/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I mean, Polly Toynbee is an outstanding example of a journalist who’s basically concerned, I think she wouldn’t take it amiss, with giving her own views, and they’re trenchant views, and they’re strong views, and I think she has as much influence as a cabinet minister, perhaps more than most women cabinet ministers, anyway. An...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Accepting that I would not become a politician (14/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: And of course, frankly, being an MP is not, and a lot of people won’t like this, but it is not really a full-time job, however assiduous you are with your constituency. If it were a full-time job you couldn’t possibly be an MP and be a minister. Because a minister is a full-time job. And I think most politicians think that the...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Old age and death (41/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: Old age is horrid and I don't think you should pretend otherwise. It's no fun, your faculties start failing, you… that's true of your physical faculties as well as any mental ones. And it is, I think… there's no... I don't want to live to be 90 or anything like that. Everyone I know at that... all says I wish I could die. And ...
published: 22 May 2018 -
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008] TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audien...
published: 22 May 2018
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5:55
Anthony Howard - Journalists admire politicians who make a splash and cut a dash (19/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:55
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 3747
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: It’s very hard, isn’t it? I mean, the politicians journalists admire are all those who make a splash and cut a dash. Not necessarily does that make you admired by your own colleagues. I mean, the last person that one would think was in any way glamorous was Mr Attlee, who presided over the Labour government from '45 to '51. Most working politicians, who maybe… there are many of them dead by now, but who knew anything about Attlee would have put him almost top of 20th century Prime Ministers, but that was without any gifts of showmanship or anything like that. But that was the view from within. I think the view from without would always be that Churchill was a much greater Prime Minister than Attlee. I think he was a greater war Prime Minister, I think that’s probably true. Attlee wasn’t a war... he was Deputy Premier in the war, but I think as a peacetime Prime Minister, Attlee left Churchill standing. Churchill wasn’t a very effective peacetime Prime Minister between '51 and '55. He was too old, he ended up being over 80. I mean... ridiculous. But... so I think it’s not just the flashy qualities, but it is, of course, this sense being a politician is being a performer. It is the politician who can make a phrase, deliver a dazzling speech, who attracts attention.
Why do we talk about Nye Bevan? Because he was a wonderful orator. Superb orator, both on the platform and in the House of Commons. Why do people like me, of my age, still sort of remember Iain Macleod? Because he was a wonderful speaker. And... he wasn’t much good on telly, because... see that’s a different technique, but on a public platform, from the frontbench in the House of Commons, he was, you know, far and away the best orator in the Conservative Party. On the other hand, you take someone like Rab Butler, a most faithful servant of the Conservative Party, down 40 years. No, never a great performer, never a tremendous orator. Harold Macmillan, on the other hand, could do it. He was a showman. He knew how to do it.
But it is, I think... to go into politics and not have any of the showman qualities, which is what Attlee did, is taking a very high risk. The day Attlee became leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Dalton, who was a pretty ghastly old brute, an Old Etonian Labour MP, wrote in his diary, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And, you know, in a sense, Dalton was right, Attlee did look like a little mouse. But my goodness, that mouse roared and went on to lead the Labour Party for 20 years. 20 years! And be Prime Minister twice. So I think Dalton really got it wrong, but that’s how Attlee was regarded.
And some of the more flashy characters, of course, don’t make it at all. I mean I don’t want to be able to go into private grief, but someone like Jonathan Aitken looks as if he came out of a sort of political novel, but his whole career came to grief. And that has tended to happen with perhaps the more flashy political operators. John Stonehouse, remember too, who went to jug, too. So I think it’s a high-level, high-wire act. And I can’t quite see what’s so attractive to it to someone who wants to be a quiet administrator. And you can do that as a civil servant. Why buy into the public dimension if you’re not very happy with it? And of course, most politicians are, I think, show-offs, and even if they’re not very talented, they think they are, and they think they’re Demosthenes when they’re not. But on the whole, I think you’ve got to have a part of your makeup... there has to be part actor. And it’s quite important, the acting side of politics, I think. And above all, because after all, speech is your trade, that’s what you’re engaged in, I think you’ve got to be a good speaker. And if you can’t, it’s rather pathetic.
I mean, there have been some very, very bad politicians who just couldn’t put one word next to the other. Frank Cousins, who became, sort of, cabinet minister in the Wilson government, absolutely hopeless. People like Fred Mulley, who was a long-serving Labour cabinet minister, hopeless at making speeches. Those who tend to capture the public imagination are people like Barbara Castle. And Barbara Castle was a splendid speaker, really was very, very good. My goodness, she was an actress. She understood all about dress and appearance and all the rest of it, but she was really a performing politician.
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/19 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Journalists_Admire_Politicians_Who_Make_A_Splash_And_Cut_A_Dash_(19_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: It’s very hard, isn’t it? I mean, the politicians journalists admire are all those who make a splash and cut a dash. Not necessarily does that make you admired by your own colleagues. I mean, the last person that one would think was in any way glamorous was Mr Attlee, who presided over the Labour government from '45 to '51. Most working politicians, who maybe… there are many of them dead by now, but who knew anything about Attlee would have put him almost top of 20th century Prime Ministers, but that was without any gifts of showmanship or anything like that. But that was the view from within. I think the view from without would always be that Churchill was a much greater Prime Minister than Attlee. I think he was a greater war Prime Minister, I think that’s probably true. Attlee wasn’t a war... he was Deputy Premier in the war, but I think as a peacetime Prime Minister, Attlee left Churchill standing. Churchill wasn’t a very effective peacetime Prime Minister between '51 and '55. He was too old, he ended up being over 80. I mean... ridiculous. But... so I think it’s not just the flashy qualities, but it is, of course, this sense being a politician is being a performer. It is the politician who can make a phrase, deliver a dazzling speech, who attracts attention.
Why do we talk about Nye Bevan? Because he was a wonderful orator. Superb orator, both on the platform and in the House of Commons. Why do people like me, of my age, still sort of remember Iain Macleod? Because he was a wonderful speaker. And... he wasn’t much good on telly, because... see that’s a different technique, but on a public platform, from the frontbench in the House of Commons, he was, you know, far and away the best orator in the Conservative Party. On the other hand, you take someone like Rab Butler, a most faithful servant of the Conservative Party, down 40 years. No, never a great performer, never a tremendous orator. Harold Macmillan, on the other hand, could do it. He was a showman. He knew how to do it.
But it is, I think... to go into politics and not have any of the showman qualities, which is what Attlee did, is taking a very high risk. The day Attlee became leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Dalton, who was a pretty ghastly old brute, an Old Etonian Labour MP, wrote in his diary, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And, you know, in a sense, Dalton was right, Attlee did look like a little mouse. But my goodness, that mouse roared and went on to lead the Labour Party for 20 years. 20 years! And be Prime Minister twice. So I think Dalton really got it wrong, but that’s how Attlee was regarded.
And some of the more flashy characters, of course, don’t make it at all. I mean I don’t want to be able to go into private grief, but someone like Jonathan Aitken looks as if he came out of a sort of political novel, but his whole career came to grief. And that has tended to happen with perhaps the more flashy political operators. John Stonehouse, remember too, who went to jug, too. So I think it’s a high-level, high-wire act. And I can’t quite see what’s so attractive to it to someone who wants to be a quiet administrator. And you can do that as a civil servant. Why buy into the public dimension if you’re not very happy with it? And of course, most politicians are, I think, show-offs, and even if they’re not very talented, they think they are, and they think they’re Demosthenes when they’re not. But on the whole, I think you’ve got to have a part of your makeup... there has to be part actor. And it’s quite important, the acting side of politics, I think. And above all, because after all, speech is your trade, that’s what you’re engaged in, I think you’ve got to be a good speaker. And if you can’t, it’s rather pathetic.
I mean, there have been some very, very bad politicians who just couldn’t put one word next to the other. Frank Cousins, who became, sort of, cabinet minister in the Wilson government, absolutely hopeless. People like Fred Mulley, who was a long-serving Labour cabinet minister, hopeless at making speeches. Those who tend to capture the public imagination are people like Barbara Castle. And Barbara Castle was a splendid speaker, really was very, very good. My goodness, she was an actress. She understood all about dress and appearance and all the rest of it, but she was really a performing politician.
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/19 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 3747
3:51
Anthony Howard - Never meeting Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister (28/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:51
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 5656
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: So as I say, I never saw her in all the time she was Prime Minister, I never saw her. She would… I mean, I saw her in the House of Commons, but I never had any private interview or anything. She was very vindictive, as a matter of fact. For example, no reason why she should have asked me, but Donald Trelford, who was editor of The Observer at time, we’d been rather critical of Mark Thatcher and his goings-on with Cementation and contracts and this kind of thing, and all the time that I was at The Observer as number two to Donald, not one single invitation to Number 10 came to the editor of The Observer. That was because we were considered to have behaved very badly over the Mark Thatcher business, we were absolutely right came out [unclear], but she was vindictive in that way. And I really had no dealings with her at all until… Oh, I leave one thing out. I did have dealings with her at a press conference.
1979, Conservative Central Office. For some reason, the Conservatives had left open the possibility in their election manifesto, of restoring capital punishment. They hadn’t said they would do it, but they said there’d be a free vote on the restoration of capital punishment. And so I took it upon myself at this press conference to ask a question. She was then leader of the opposition, to say, 'Mrs Thatcher, this reference to capital punishment in that manifesto, is that to give your own self the freedom to vote in favour of hanging? Is that what lay behind it?' 'Mr Howard, only you would ask a question like that. Next'.
So I didn’t do myself any good with that, either. But she then, very sweetly, as a matter of fact, when I was doing a radio series about prominent politicians, for Radio 4, in I think it must have been 1999 or something like that, or perhaps… anyway, she’d long since… she’d become a back number and she was now Lady Thatcher in the House of Lords, I think I wrote to her and said, look, Keith Joseph is one of the people I’ve chosen, and could I come and talk to you about Keith Joseph? And she immediately wrote back and said, of course, I’d be delighted to talk about Keith. And she did have a tremendous feeling of the debt of obligation she owed Joseph. Hadn’t been helped by the fact that, although Joseph joined her cabinet, he was not a great success, and eventually left, as, I think Secretary of State for Industry, where he’d really been rather a failure. Or did he…? No, I think he left as Minister of Education. He was Industry, he moved from Industry to Education, I think. But he hadn’t been a success. He was a great genuine intellectual, he used to agonise...'Oh God, oh dear...' And she, I think, felt guilty about him, because she thought the leadership had been his inheritance.
Anyway, she saw me that day in that grand, sort of, residence she had… not residence, sort of Embassy place, which was her office in Chesham Place. And she was very nice and very sweet and there was a young man there. But I did notice that her mind wasn’t what it was, and I’m afraid that, even though it’s long before she was declared to be, sort of, no longer going to make speeches or stuff, it was perfectly clear that she wasn’t quite right. That she’d lose the thread in what she was saying, this kind of thing. But as I say, she couldn’t have been more charming, and it was very good of her to do it for me. And I think she did it for Keith, not for me. Keith was already dead by then. But I thank her for that and am grateful for that. That really was the last contact I had with her, and, as I say, my contacts with her were pretty intermittent down the years, and I don’t think she… if she had known that I was a friend of Michael Heseltine, that would have added to my sins, so it was probably well she didn’t know that, really, and I don’t suppose she knew that.
But of course, I had been, and was also when Michael resigned, you know, I was very much on Michael’s side over Westland and all that. And I suppose what I wrote about her was, on the whole, pretty critical in The Observer, too, and that can’t have helped.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Never_Meeting_Margaret_Thatcher_While_She_Was_Prime_Minister_(28_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: So as I say, I never saw her in all the time she was Prime Minister, I never saw her. She would… I mean, I saw her in the House of Commons, but I never had any private interview or anything. She was very vindictive, as a matter of fact. For example, no reason why she should have asked me, but Donald Trelford, who was editor of The Observer at time, we’d been rather critical of Mark Thatcher and his goings-on with Cementation and contracts and this kind of thing, and all the time that I was at The Observer as number two to Donald, not one single invitation to Number 10 came to the editor of The Observer. That was because we were considered to have behaved very badly over the Mark Thatcher business, we were absolutely right came out [unclear], but she was vindictive in that way. And I really had no dealings with her at all until… Oh, I leave one thing out. I did have dealings with her at a press conference.
1979, Conservative Central Office. For some reason, the Conservatives had left open the possibility in their election manifesto, of restoring capital punishment. They hadn’t said they would do it, but they said there’d be a free vote on the restoration of capital punishment. And so I took it upon myself at this press conference to ask a question. She was then leader of the opposition, to say, 'Mrs Thatcher, this reference to capital punishment in that manifesto, is that to give your own self the freedom to vote in favour of hanging? Is that what lay behind it?' 'Mr Howard, only you would ask a question like that. Next'.
So I didn’t do myself any good with that, either. But she then, very sweetly, as a matter of fact, when I was doing a radio series about prominent politicians, for Radio 4, in I think it must have been 1999 or something like that, or perhaps… anyway, she’d long since… she’d become a back number and she was now Lady Thatcher in the House of Lords, I think I wrote to her and said, look, Keith Joseph is one of the people I’ve chosen, and could I come and talk to you about Keith Joseph? And she immediately wrote back and said, of course, I’d be delighted to talk about Keith. And she did have a tremendous feeling of the debt of obligation she owed Joseph. Hadn’t been helped by the fact that, although Joseph joined her cabinet, he was not a great success, and eventually left, as, I think Secretary of State for Industry, where he’d really been rather a failure. Or did he…? No, I think he left as Minister of Education. He was Industry, he moved from Industry to Education, I think. But he hadn’t been a success. He was a great genuine intellectual, he used to agonise...'Oh God, oh dear...' And she, I think, felt guilty about him, because she thought the leadership had been his inheritance.
Anyway, she saw me that day in that grand, sort of, residence she had… not residence, sort of Embassy place, which was her office in Chesham Place. And she was very nice and very sweet and there was a young man there. But I did notice that her mind wasn’t what it was, and I’m afraid that, even though it’s long before she was declared to be, sort of, no longer going to make speeches or stuff, it was perfectly clear that she wasn’t quite right. That she’d lose the thread in what she was saying, this kind of thing. But as I say, she couldn’t have been more charming, and it was very good of her to do it for me. And I think she did it for Keith, not for me. Keith was already dead by then. But I thank her for that and am grateful for that. That really was the last contact I had with her, and, as I say, my contacts with her were pretty intermittent down the years, and I don’t think she… if she had known that I was a friend of Michael Heseltine, that would have added to my sins, so it was probably well she didn’t know that, really, and I don’t suppose she knew that.
But of course, I had been, and was also when Michael resigned, you know, I was very much on Michael’s side over Westland and all that. And I suppose what I wrote about her was, on the whole, pretty critical in The Observer, too, and that can’t have helped.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 5656
6:38
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:38
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 5152
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/35 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_The_State_Of_Britain_(35_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/35 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 5152
2:48
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:48
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 8377
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Tony_Blair_A_Tory_In_Disguise_(31_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 8377
5:28
Anthony Howard - Being fascinated by politics for a long time (13/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:28
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 3782
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I find it very hard to know why I first became interested in politics. My father and mother had no interest in politics, really. I think my father was a liberal conservative, he was entirely opposed to capital punishment and things like that. He thought the whole Suez expedition in 1956, which I was engaged in as a national serviceman, was absolute, if not criminal, was at least lunacy. And he was quite right, of course. My mother, I think, eventually became a kind of… possibly even on my account, occasionally a Labour voter, but probably much more likely SDP material. I think my father probably always voted Conservative.
So where did it come from? I don’t really know. I was at school at Westminster with the son of a man who, at that stage, was very much, sort of, persecuted in the press, and that was John Strachey, who was the Minister of Food in the Labour Government at that time. And Charles Strachey, who was in the same house as I was, you know, I began to feel, sort of, rather protective towards him, because every day brought these terrible headlines about his dad in all the papers and all the rest of it. And so I think it was when I was at school that I converted from being, you know, a conventional schoolboy Tory, really, to being a supporter of the Labour Party. I didn’t join the Labour Party until, I think, just before I went to Oxford when I was 18. And I suppose the interest in politics came from, at that stage, to have been trained to be a political activist, that I became the youngest prospective parliamentary candidate in the country when I was 22, I think. Admittedly a hopeless seat, where my dad was vicar in Epsom. The seat was Epsom and Ewell. And I think it was first of all wanting to play the game, and then when that didn’t prove possible, mainly because of journalism... in those days it was very hard to ride the two horses of journalism and, at least it was in the Labour Party, because the Labour Party had gotten very suspicious of journalists. And so not playing the game, but becoming a kind of analyser and, you know, a spectator at it, was my… what happened.
And I think I did go on being fascinated by politics for a long time. But I remember thinking one of the attractions of America was that American politics was much, much more fun and more rewarding to study than British politics, in that they were so many more permutations. You become a governor of a state, you become a senator, you become, you know, a congressman, mayor of New York, mayor of Chicago. So there really were many more options open to you, whereas in Britain, all roads lead to Westminster. And you will not prosper unless you become an MP. And then, of course, it’s just the luck of the draw whether you’re… the tide is running with your party, which means that your party’s in government, and indeed whether you attract the favour of the leader of your party who, if the party is in government, will be Prime Minister. And I’ve known lots of politicians of great ability who’ve never really made it to the top at all.
I mean, let’s take the example of Dick Crossman. Brilliant man. Been an Oxford don, ran psychological warfare in wartime, elected to parliament for a safe seat in Coventry in 1945. And with one very brief, I think, period of about two months, when he sat on the Opposition frontbench when Gaitskell was still leader of the party, he had no kind of opportunity to shine on his frontbench at all. Never was given a job by Attlee during the period of the Attlee government, except somebody, I think it was Gaitskell, went to see Attlee once, said, 'I think you ought to do something for Dick Crossman. He’s very able, you know'.' Not a question of ability', he said, 'question of character. That’s the trouble there'. So Attlee didn’t like him, and that was partly because he’d been to… he’d been a friend of his parents, and he thought Dick had behaved in a very overbearing way as a young Wykehamist scholar, and as a young undergraduate. And he didn’t like him, so he’d taken against him in a big way.
So, you know, 19 years sitting there on the backbenches before becoming a minister. Much the same, too, of Barbara Castle, who… you know, she waited all that time to get into the cabinet. Now, it’s true they were very lucky. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/13 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Being_Fascinated_By_Politics_For_A_Long_Time_(13_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I find it very hard to know why I first became interested in politics. My father and mother had no interest in politics, really. I think my father was a liberal conservative, he was entirely opposed to capital punishment and things like that. He thought the whole Suez expedition in 1956, which I was engaged in as a national serviceman, was absolute, if not criminal, was at least lunacy. And he was quite right, of course. My mother, I think, eventually became a kind of… possibly even on my account, occasionally a Labour voter, but probably much more likely SDP material. I think my father probably always voted Conservative.
So where did it come from? I don’t really know. I was at school at Westminster with the son of a man who, at that stage, was very much, sort of, persecuted in the press, and that was John Strachey, who was the Minister of Food in the Labour Government at that time. And Charles Strachey, who was in the same house as I was, you know, I began to feel, sort of, rather protective towards him, because every day brought these terrible headlines about his dad in all the papers and all the rest of it. And so I think it was when I was at school that I converted from being, you know, a conventional schoolboy Tory, really, to being a supporter of the Labour Party. I didn’t join the Labour Party until, I think, just before I went to Oxford when I was 18. And I suppose the interest in politics came from, at that stage, to have been trained to be a political activist, that I became the youngest prospective parliamentary candidate in the country when I was 22, I think. Admittedly a hopeless seat, where my dad was vicar in Epsom. The seat was Epsom and Ewell. And I think it was first of all wanting to play the game, and then when that didn’t prove possible, mainly because of journalism... in those days it was very hard to ride the two horses of journalism and, at least it was in the Labour Party, because the Labour Party had gotten very suspicious of journalists. And so not playing the game, but becoming a kind of analyser and, you know, a spectator at it, was my… what happened.
And I think I did go on being fascinated by politics for a long time. But I remember thinking one of the attractions of America was that American politics was much, much more fun and more rewarding to study than British politics, in that they were so many more permutations. You become a governor of a state, you become a senator, you become, you know, a congressman, mayor of New York, mayor of Chicago. So there really were many more options open to you, whereas in Britain, all roads lead to Westminster. And you will not prosper unless you become an MP. And then, of course, it’s just the luck of the draw whether you’re… the tide is running with your party, which means that your party’s in government, and indeed whether you attract the favour of the leader of your party who, if the party is in government, will be Prime Minister. And I’ve known lots of politicians of great ability who’ve never really made it to the top at all.
I mean, let’s take the example of Dick Crossman. Brilliant man. Been an Oxford don, ran psychological warfare in wartime, elected to parliament for a safe seat in Coventry in 1945. And with one very brief, I think, period of about two months, when he sat on the Opposition frontbench when Gaitskell was still leader of the party, he had no kind of opportunity to shine on his frontbench at all. Never was given a job by Attlee during the period of the Attlee government, except somebody, I think it was Gaitskell, went to see Attlee once, said, 'I think you ought to do something for Dick Crossman. He’s very able, you know'.' Not a question of ability', he said, 'question of character. That’s the trouble there'. So Attlee didn’t like him, and that was partly because he’d been to… he’d been a friend of his parents, and he thought Dick had behaved in a very overbearing way as a young Wykehamist scholar, and as a young undergraduate. And he didn’t like him, so he’d taken against him in a big way.
So, you know, 19 years sitting there on the backbenches before becoming a minister. Much the same, too, of Barbara Castle, who… you know, she waited all that time to get into the cabinet. Now, it’s true they were very lucky. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/13 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 3782
5:18
Anthony Howard - Two masters at school who had enormous influence on me (2/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:18
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 3233
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: There were two masters at school who had enormous influence on me. One was not an intellectual at all but when I went to Westminster in 1946, he was my first form master. His name was Stephen Lushington. He’s still alive, aged 90+ and he taught English and he’d been… he was a very colourful figure. He’d been in the army during the war. He had occasion to wear a, kind of, scarlet sweater and his 'British warm'. He’d been Secretary of the Oxford University Dramatic Society at Oxford and he used to produce all the school plays. So even after I’d passed out of his care as a teacher because he was the director of the school plays, I saw a lot of him, and he used to produce me in all these plays. A great man. Very bad luck. Should have certainly become a headmaster. I once asked a headmaster of Westminster, why Stephen never became a headmaster. And he was a rather gloomy man… called Walter Hamilton, who’d become a headmaster of Rugby, and a tremendous, sort of, power and patronage he had. And I said, 'Mr Hamilton, why did Stephen never get a headship?' 'Oh', he said, ‘he would keep marrying these women’. I don’t know who else he was meant to marry but he did have about four wives, it’s true, and that wasn’t a terribly good qualification to be a headmaster. But he was an inspired teacher, and as I say, he was not a great intellect but he knew how to teach.
The other one was an intellect, he was the senior history master at Westminster, called Charles Kealey, who was a, you know, don manqué, and he’d failed to get a fellowship at an Oxford college and he… so I think the first time I ever heard him, he came into the seventh form, as it was in those days, classroom, and he said, 'Well, you may wonder why I’m with you here today’. And we thought… 'Well, I’ll tell you why it is. I went to dinner at Christ Church and they said, 'How are you, Mr Kealey?' And I said, 'Very nice, thank you'. And that’s why I’m here today, teaching you boys’. So he had a sense of humour and a sense of fun, but he was… he was a genuine intellectual. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a great writer.
I got myself into terrible trouble. He was a great authority on Origen, the early church father, and I suddenly saw, when I was editor of the 'New Statesman', that a book about Origen was coming out. And so I said to the literary editor, 'Look, you probably wouldn’t normally review this but do me a favour. I want this Westminster schoolmaster to review it and, you know, and it’ll be a great act of kindness and an act of piety on my part. I want it done'. So… Claire Tomalin, she was, my literary editor, she said alright, 'Shall I write to him?' I said, 'It’d better come from you rather than me’. So she did and about ten days later, she came to me, holding a, sort of, a piece of exercise paper and said, 'Tony, it’s hopeless. We can’t use this’. And I said, ‘Well, we can’t possibly not use it. Sorry. Give it to me’. And so I then worked on it and tried to improve it and liven it up a bit, and I gave it to her and said, 'Put it in’. We put it in the review and with very bad feeling she did. But that was my paying my debt to Charles Kealey in a way.
No, he was… he stayed at Westminster for years, and became a housemaster, which was a surprise to a lot of people, I think, but he became quite a successful housemaster for his house, and then he became the school archivist. I mean, his whole career was at Westminster. And I’ve never forgiven that very fashionable headmaster, John Rae, in that Charles’ great ambition was to write the school history and I think he did a synopsis or may even have done the first two chapters, and he showed them to Rae and Rae said they were hopeless. Now, I’ve said that his review was hopeless so maybe Rae was right but, you know, it was an act of real brutality and unkindness, and it was given to somebody else who did it pretty inadequately, in my view. And I’ve always held that against John Rae, and indeed when I wrote his – Charles Kealey’s – obit in 'The Times', I especially put that in, about how Rae had said no, he couldn’t be the school historian, how terribly hurt he’d been by this. Then they reproduced 'The Times' obit with permission in 'The Elizabethan', the school magazine, and damn me, they’d taken out the whole of that bit about… it wasn’t there. It disappeared as if it had never been. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/2 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Two_Masters_At_School_Who_Had_Enormous_Influence_On_Me_(2_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: There were two masters at school who had enormous influence on me. One was not an intellectual at all but when I went to Westminster in 1946, he was my first form master. His name was Stephen Lushington. He’s still alive, aged 90+ and he taught English and he’d been… he was a very colourful figure. He’d been in the army during the war. He had occasion to wear a, kind of, scarlet sweater and his 'British warm'. He’d been Secretary of the Oxford University Dramatic Society at Oxford and he used to produce all the school plays. So even after I’d passed out of his care as a teacher because he was the director of the school plays, I saw a lot of him, and he used to produce me in all these plays. A great man. Very bad luck. Should have certainly become a headmaster. I once asked a headmaster of Westminster, why Stephen never became a headmaster. And he was a rather gloomy man… called Walter Hamilton, who’d become a headmaster of Rugby, and a tremendous, sort of, power and patronage he had. And I said, 'Mr Hamilton, why did Stephen never get a headship?' 'Oh', he said, ‘he would keep marrying these women’. I don’t know who else he was meant to marry but he did have about four wives, it’s true, and that wasn’t a terribly good qualification to be a headmaster. But he was an inspired teacher, and as I say, he was not a great intellect but he knew how to teach.
The other one was an intellect, he was the senior history master at Westminster, called Charles Kealey, who was a, you know, don manqué, and he’d failed to get a fellowship at an Oxford college and he… so I think the first time I ever heard him, he came into the seventh form, as it was in those days, classroom, and he said, 'Well, you may wonder why I’m with you here today’. And we thought… 'Well, I’ll tell you why it is. I went to dinner at Christ Church and they said, 'How are you, Mr Kealey?' And I said, 'Very nice, thank you'. And that’s why I’m here today, teaching you boys’. So he had a sense of humour and a sense of fun, but he was… he was a genuine intellectual. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a great writer.
I got myself into terrible trouble. He was a great authority on Origen, the early church father, and I suddenly saw, when I was editor of the 'New Statesman', that a book about Origen was coming out. And so I said to the literary editor, 'Look, you probably wouldn’t normally review this but do me a favour. I want this Westminster schoolmaster to review it and, you know, and it’ll be a great act of kindness and an act of piety on my part. I want it done'. So… Claire Tomalin, she was, my literary editor, she said alright, 'Shall I write to him?' I said, 'It’d better come from you rather than me’. So she did and about ten days later, she came to me, holding a, sort of, a piece of exercise paper and said, 'Tony, it’s hopeless. We can’t use this’. And I said, ‘Well, we can’t possibly not use it. Sorry. Give it to me’. And so I then worked on it and tried to improve it and liven it up a bit, and I gave it to her and said, 'Put it in’. We put it in the review and with very bad feeling she did. But that was my paying my debt to Charles Kealey in a way.
No, he was… he stayed at Westminster for years, and became a housemaster, which was a surprise to a lot of people, I think, but he became quite a successful housemaster for his house, and then he became the school archivist. I mean, his whole career was at Westminster. And I’ve never forgiven that very fashionable headmaster, John Rae, in that Charles’ great ambition was to write the school history and I think he did a synopsis or may even have done the first two chapters, and he showed them to Rae and Rae said they were hopeless. Now, I’ve said that his review was hopeless so maybe Rae was right but, you know, it was an act of real brutality and unkindness, and it was given to somebody else who did it pretty inadequately, in my view. And I’ve always held that against John Rae, and indeed when I wrote his – Charles Kealey’s – obit in 'The Times', I especially put that in, about how Rae had said no, he couldn’t be the school historian, how terribly hurt he’d been by this. Then they reproduced 'The Times' obit with permission in 'The Elizabethan', the school magazine, and damn me, they’d taken out the whole of that bit about… it wasn’t there. It disappeared as if it had never been. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/2 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 3233
3:36
Anthony Howard - When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade (22/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:36
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 1974
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I mean, Polly Toynbee is an outstanding example of a journalist who’s basically concerned, I think she wouldn’t take it amiss, with giving her own views, and they’re trenchant views, and they’re strong views, and I think she has as much influence as a cabinet minister, perhaps more than most women cabinet ministers, anyway. And it’s not just her. I mean, there’s a lady been writing for many years in the 'Daily Mail' called Ann Leslie. Now Ann Leslie is very trenchant in what she has to say. Of course, nowadays, which journalists didn’t have in the past, they all have the opportunity of appearing on television.
And someone like Polly seems hardly to be off the box, and Ann Leslie does a great deal of programmes like 'Question Time'... normally have one journalist on. And all that wasn’t there. I mean, it seems to me extraordinary to remember, but when I started out, journalism was an anonymous trade. If you looked at the paper, certainly in the quality market, it would say, 'By our diplomatic correspondent', 'By our political correspondent', 'By our labour correspondent'. No one got a by-line. Now we don’t only have by-lines, we have sodding great features, photographs of the person who’s writing the story. So it has all changed enormously. And I think one of the things that brought about that change was the belief by newspaper managements that it did them good if their own staff appeared on radio or television. And years ago, when I used to work on 'The World at One', I was always staggered that papers like the 'Financial Times' would send you a list of their experts... their specialists in various fields, to encourage you to put them… that’s just sound radio, puff puff radio. And now, I think some people are judged, you know, as to how successful they are by how much they actually appear on the box.
I was very struck the other day; I was looking through a list of some sort of trade paper called 'All Politics' [sic] or something, of the 100 best-known political correspondents. And I read it with some interest. And I suddenly realised that on it didn’t once appear the doyen of all political correspondents, Alan Watkins. Why? Because Watkins does very little broadcasting. On it didn’t appear Bruce Anderson. Well, Bruce Anderson doesn’t do much broadcasting, he wasn’t on it. So now if you’re going to make your name as a political journalist, you really have, I think, to have a regular spot or something, at least to be... appear on Newsnight, appear on at least News 24 [sic] on BBC, appear on Sky Television. People like Michael White appear on Sky all the time, 'The Guardian's Michael White, and that’s what gives them their kind of public identity. And I think newspaper managements realised that, and I’ve often wondered about this, why did they move from anonymity to absolutely glorying by-lines, and I think it was because they thought this was a way of getting free advertising off the airwaves, and every time you say, and with me is so-and-so of such-and-such paper, and that is considered free advertising for the paper. And therefore they had no choice but to give up the whole discreet thing, and certainly, as I say, when I went to 'The Guardian', one by-line used to appear every day. If you wrote the leader page article, which was on the page which had the leaders on it, and had the letters down below, you actually got your by-line. It would say, by Anthony Howard. That was the only place in the paper, when I started, where a name of a journalist appeared, and the prize of writing the LPA was that you saw your name in print. Otherwise, it was always, 'By our own reporter'.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_When_I_Started_Out_Journalism_Was_An_Anonymous_Trade_(22_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I mean, Polly Toynbee is an outstanding example of a journalist who’s basically concerned, I think she wouldn’t take it amiss, with giving her own views, and they’re trenchant views, and they’re strong views, and I think she has as much influence as a cabinet minister, perhaps more than most women cabinet ministers, anyway. And it’s not just her. I mean, there’s a lady been writing for many years in the 'Daily Mail' called Ann Leslie. Now Ann Leslie is very trenchant in what she has to say. Of course, nowadays, which journalists didn’t have in the past, they all have the opportunity of appearing on television.
And someone like Polly seems hardly to be off the box, and Ann Leslie does a great deal of programmes like 'Question Time'... normally have one journalist on. And all that wasn’t there. I mean, it seems to me extraordinary to remember, but when I started out, journalism was an anonymous trade. If you looked at the paper, certainly in the quality market, it would say, 'By our diplomatic correspondent', 'By our political correspondent', 'By our labour correspondent'. No one got a by-line. Now we don’t only have by-lines, we have sodding great features, photographs of the person who’s writing the story. So it has all changed enormously. And I think one of the things that brought about that change was the belief by newspaper managements that it did them good if their own staff appeared on radio or television. And years ago, when I used to work on 'The World at One', I was always staggered that papers like the 'Financial Times' would send you a list of their experts... their specialists in various fields, to encourage you to put them… that’s just sound radio, puff puff radio. And now, I think some people are judged, you know, as to how successful they are by how much they actually appear on the box.
I was very struck the other day; I was looking through a list of some sort of trade paper called 'All Politics' [sic] or something, of the 100 best-known political correspondents. And I read it with some interest. And I suddenly realised that on it didn’t once appear the doyen of all political correspondents, Alan Watkins. Why? Because Watkins does very little broadcasting. On it didn’t appear Bruce Anderson. Well, Bruce Anderson doesn’t do much broadcasting, he wasn’t on it. So now if you’re going to make your name as a political journalist, you really have, I think, to have a regular spot or something, at least to be... appear on Newsnight, appear on at least News 24 [sic] on BBC, appear on Sky Television. People like Michael White appear on Sky all the time, 'The Guardian's Michael White, and that’s what gives them their kind of public identity. And I think newspaper managements realised that, and I’ve often wondered about this, why did they move from anonymity to absolutely glorying by-lines, and I think it was because they thought this was a way of getting free advertising off the airwaves, and every time you say, and with me is so-and-so of such-and-such paper, and that is considered free advertising for the paper. And therefore they had no choice but to give up the whole discreet thing, and certainly, as I say, when I went to 'The Guardian', one by-line used to appear every day. If you wrote the leader page article, which was on the page which had the leaders on it, and had the letters down below, you actually got your by-line. It would say, by Anthony Howard. That was the only place in the paper, when I started, where a name of a journalist appeared, and the prize of writing the LPA was that you saw your name in print. Otherwise, it was always, 'By our own reporter'.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 1974
4:00
Anthony Howard - Accepting that I would not become a politician (14/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:00
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 4037
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, frankly, being an MP is not, and a lot of people won’t like this, but it is not really a full-time job, however assiduous you are with your constituency. If it were a full-time job you couldn’t possibly be an MP and be a minister. Because a minister is a full-time job. And I think most politicians think that the only thing that counts is actually, you know, being in charge of a government department. And that’s what you wait for and that’s what you hope for. And, of course, in a sense, you know, you have a better chance of getting there than perhaps you do, as a journalist of becoming an editor, because there are what? Now about 23 members of the cabinet, they’ve all got departments to run, and they’re not… well, they’re… I don’t think there are 23 national newspaper editors. Obviously, with provincial ones, there are, but if you want to edit a national newspaper, you’ve got less chance, really, than if you want to be a cabinet minister.
But I don’t know. I suppose the fascination started off with, as I say, wanting to be a politician myself, then realising, and accepting that it wasn’t going to work, because the moment I suppose I went to the 'New Statesman' to... in 1961... although it was a left-wing paper, I think that people thought, well, you know, he’s decided to be a journalist. And it was all right when I was on 'Reynold’s News', because that was okay, I was a Labour candidate at the same time, but I had to give that up when I went to work for 'The Guardian', because, quite rightly, Alastair Hetherington, the editor of 'The Guardian' made it a condition of my employment that I must give up being a Labour candidate. He said, 'Look, I may believe that you’re being straight and honest, but the readers won’t'. The readers will write in and say, can we be surprised that your reporter writes... because in those days we didn’t have any by-lines... as we all know, he is himself a prospective Labour candidate. He said, 'I can’t have that, so you must sacrifice it and give it up'. And it wasn’t a great sacrifice, because it wasn’t a seat I had the faintest hope of winning. But I think from that moment on, I realised that you couldn’t ride the two horses. So, to be fair, to my own folly, I suppose, I did, when I left the 'New Statesman' as editor, which I became in 1972 and stayed there six years, when I left in 1978, I did make some rather timid attempts to, sort of, get back on to the political horse and wrote off to one or two constituencies and was even interviewed here and there, but never, I think, at the level of a full selection conference.
But it became clear to me that, such was the suspicion of journalism and of the, sort of, you know, anti-Labour bias of all journalists, that it wasn’t going to succeed. And when it became clear that I wouldn’t have got a seat in the 1979 election, I gave that aspiration up. Thank goodness I did, because stretching ahead, though I didn’t know that at the time, were 14 years of Labour… 18 years, no 18 years of Labour in opposition. And I think that I would have felt pretty frustrated if, at the age of 46, I’d gone into the House of Commons and had to sit there until I was over pensionable age, 65, knowing I’d never get office because simply the tide was not with the Labour Party at that time. It wasn’t until 1997 that Tony Blair won the election of that year, ending an 18-year exile from power of the Labour Party. And if I had gone into the House at the time… and some of my friends tried very much to help me. People like Roy Hattersley tried very hard on my behalf, and kind of people like that. Then, you know, what I’d have sentenced myself to would have been much less rewarding than running the 'New Statesman' had been. And indeed, then later on, which I went on to edit 'The Listener' and then I went to 'The Observer', so I think they’d have been much less fulfilling years than they were by returning to journalism. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/14 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Accepting_That_I_Would_Not_Become_A_Politician_(14_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, frankly, being an MP is not, and a lot of people won’t like this, but it is not really a full-time job, however assiduous you are with your constituency. If it were a full-time job you couldn’t possibly be an MP and be a minister. Because a minister is a full-time job. And I think most politicians think that the only thing that counts is actually, you know, being in charge of a government department. And that’s what you wait for and that’s what you hope for. And, of course, in a sense, you know, you have a better chance of getting there than perhaps you do, as a journalist of becoming an editor, because there are what? Now about 23 members of the cabinet, they’ve all got departments to run, and they’re not… well, they’re… I don’t think there are 23 national newspaper editors. Obviously, with provincial ones, there are, but if you want to edit a national newspaper, you’ve got less chance, really, than if you want to be a cabinet minister.
But I don’t know. I suppose the fascination started off with, as I say, wanting to be a politician myself, then realising, and accepting that it wasn’t going to work, because the moment I suppose I went to the 'New Statesman' to... in 1961... although it was a left-wing paper, I think that people thought, well, you know, he’s decided to be a journalist. And it was all right when I was on 'Reynold’s News', because that was okay, I was a Labour candidate at the same time, but I had to give that up when I went to work for 'The Guardian', because, quite rightly, Alastair Hetherington, the editor of 'The Guardian' made it a condition of my employment that I must give up being a Labour candidate. He said, 'Look, I may believe that you’re being straight and honest, but the readers won’t'. The readers will write in and say, can we be surprised that your reporter writes... because in those days we didn’t have any by-lines... as we all know, he is himself a prospective Labour candidate. He said, 'I can’t have that, so you must sacrifice it and give it up'. And it wasn’t a great sacrifice, because it wasn’t a seat I had the faintest hope of winning. But I think from that moment on, I realised that you couldn’t ride the two horses. So, to be fair, to my own folly, I suppose, I did, when I left the 'New Statesman' as editor, which I became in 1972 and stayed there six years, when I left in 1978, I did make some rather timid attempts to, sort of, get back on to the political horse and wrote off to one or two constituencies and was even interviewed here and there, but never, I think, at the level of a full selection conference.
But it became clear to me that, such was the suspicion of journalism and of the, sort of, you know, anti-Labour bias of all journalists, that it wasn’t going to succeed. And when it became clear that I wouldn’t have got a seat in the 1979 election, I gave that aspiration up. Thank goodness I did, because stretching ahead, though I didn’t know that at the time, were 14 years of Labour… 18 years, no 18 years of Labour in opposition. And I think that I would have felt pretty frustrated if, at the age of 46, I’d gone into the House of Commons and had to sit there until I was over pensionable age, 65, knowing I’d never get office because simply the tide was not with the Labour Party at that time. It wasn’t until 1997 that Tony Blair won the election of that year, ending an 18-year exile from power of the Labour Party. And if I had gone into the House at the time… and some of my friends tried very much to help me. People like Roy Hattersley tried very hard on my behalf, and kind of people like that. Then, you know, what I’d have sentenced myself to would have been much less rewarding than running the 'New Statesman' had been. And indeed, then later on, which I went on to edit 'The Listener' and then I went to 'The Observer', so I think they’d have been much less fulfilling years than they were by returning to journalism. [...]
Visit https://www.webofstories.com/play/anthony.howard/14 to read the remaining part of the transcript.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 4037
2:55
Anthony Howard - Old age and death (41/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:55
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 4382
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent Briti...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Old age is horrid and I don't think you should pretend otherwise. It's no fun, your faculties start failing, you… that's true of your physical faculties as well as any mental ones. And it is, I think… there's no... I don't want to live to be 90 or anything like that. Everyone I know at that... all says I wish I could die. And I think, you know, you ought… I'm frightened, no doubt of… everyone's frightened of death, but I hope I'm not frightened of death as such. I think I'm frightened of the illness and the pain, and that kind of thing, but if I could just heel over, would I mind all that much? I don't know. I was brought up a Christian, of course, I'm afraid now I'm an agnostic, so I don't really believe in life after death or anything like that. Of course, my father did, because he was a clergyman, and that was the whole background I had. But I would… I think probably life after the age of 80 isn't much fun. I'm now 74, so we haven't got long to go on the last lap, final furlong.
And I don't think retirement's much fun, either. I think a lot of people look forward to retirement all their lives, they've got rather dull jobs. But then when they actually embark on it, they don't find it very rewarding and there are an amazing number of people who die very rapidly after they retire, even if they've had drab jobs. It was the job that kept them going. I'm lucky still, in that I do write occasional bits here and there. I do occasional broadcasts here and there. So I'm not entirely unemployed, though the income has dwindled, I'm afraid, drastically, and that's always a slight worry, even if you've made provision, as I've tried to do by sort of private pension schemes and that kind of thing. But it's not the same as being as well paid as you are as a columnist. And once that dries up, you've… you know, you feel the pinch. But I shouldn't whine or grizzle or complain. I'm much better off than most, as I say.
I tend to believe that death is the end, but I'm not, sort of, 99% convinced that is true. I, you know, I could be wrong about that, and I might get an agreeable surprise, although no doubt I'll be punished for not having believed it. But I think that, you know, it's true that most, sort of, doctrines of, you know, eternal life defy human comprehension, but it could be. It could be that it's right. I certainly… I suppose when I was young, I believed it was, being brought up in a vicarage, a rectory and places like that. And I've drifted away from it. Still go to church, but that's largely sort of out of custom, I think, and aesthetic appreciation of church services and stuff. But I don't go as an active believer.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Old_Age_And_Death_(41_41)
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzrgFtLWXPSiTF0iJIY782I
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Old age is horrid and I don't think you should pretend otherwise. It's no fun, your faculties start failing, you… that's true of your physical faculties as well as any mental ones. And it is, I think… there's no... I don't want to live to be 90 or anything like that. Everyone I know at that... all says I wish I could die. And I think, you know, you ought… I'm frightened, no doubt of… everyone's frightened of death, but I hope I'm not frightened of death as such. I think I'm frightened of the illness and the pain, and that kind of thing, but if I could just heel over, would I mind all that much? I don't know. I was brought up a Christian, of course, I'm afraid now I'm an agnostic, so I don't really believe in life after death or anything like that. Of course, my father did, because he was a clergyman, and that was the whole background I had. But I would… I think probably life after the age of 80 isn't much fun. I'm now 74, so we haven't got long to go on the last lap, final furlong.
And I don't think retirement's much fun, either. I think a lot of people look forward to retirement all their lives, they've got rather dull jobs. But then when they actually embark on it, they don't find it very rewarding and there are an amazing number of people who die very rapidly after they retire, even if they've had drab jobs. It was the job that kept them going. I'm lucky still, in that I do write occasional bits here and there. I do occasional broadcasts here and there. So I'm not entirely unemployed, though the income has dwindled, I'm afraid, drastically, and that's always a slight worry, even if you've made provision, as I've tried to do by sort of private pension schemes and that kind of thing. But it's not the same as being as well paid as you are as a columnist. And once that dries up, you've… you know, you feel the pinch. But I shouldn't whine or grizzle or complain. I'm much better off than most, as I say.
I tend to believe that death is the end, but I'm not, sort of, 99% convinced that is true. I, you know, I could be wrong about that, and I might get an agreeable surprise, although no doubt I'll be punished for not having believed it. But I think that, you know, it's true that most, sort of, doctrines of, you know, eternal life defy human comprehension, but it could be. It could be that it's right. I certainly… I suppose when I was young, I believed it was, being brought up in a vicarage, a rectory and places like that. And I've drifted away from it. Still go to church, but that's largely sort of out of custom, I think, and aesthetic appreciation of church services and stuff. But I don't go as an active believer.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 4382
5:12
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:12
- Uploaded Date: 22 May 2018
- views: 16375
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) ...
To listen to more of Anthony Howard’s stories, go to the playlist: https://bit.ly/33MytYK
The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
https://wn.com/Anthony_Howard_Enoch_Powell_'Had_The_Air_Of_The_Fanatic'_(33_41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 16375
6:00
Anthony Howard - At the end, Enoch Powell was a very unhappy fellow (34/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - At the end, Enoch Powell was a very unhappy fellow (34/41)
Anthony Howard - At the end, Enoch Powell was a very unhappy fellow (34/41)
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- published: 22 May 2018
- views: 34254
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, he's told us himself, and this did show great candour, that when Ted lost the election in 1974, for some reason, apparently, he'd gone to bed early. This is the story he used to tell, maybe it's true or not, but he sort of woke up to learn the news, and it might have gone on all night, anyway, because the Labour majority was tiny, four seats or something, Wilson had won that election by... and found from his 'Times' newspaper, whatever paper he bought, that the Tories had effectively lost the election. And he said that he went up to the bathroom and he lay in the bath and he sang the 'Te Deum'. Well, it's a very odd thing to me. Nominally, then, he was still a member of the Conservative Party. But no, he was a bit cranky, it has to be said.
And then of course the... I think the poison chalice. That having refused to stand in the '74 election and played footsie with the Labour Party over timing when he was going to make his speeches and all that, which made me very unhappy at the time, I remember. I didn't think it was [unclear], I think Joe Haines was the go-between, with that strange man called Alexander who writes for the 'Daily Mail', who was a great supporter of Enoch's. And they, sort of, were the point of contact about the planning and timing and all that. But a very distasteful thing to do. But then he found himself out on a limb, and so when the chance came of becoming an Ulster Unionist MP, he took it. I don't want to be rude about the Ulster Unionists today, who hardly exist as a party, or indeed necessarily rude about them then, but I think it was Churchill who said once, about somebody who said, well, I could become an Ulster Unionist. Churchill said: 'If you touch pitch, you will be defiled'. And poor Enoch. I mean, he was… there he was with these deadbeats and no-hopers in the Ulster Unionist Party. Here was a man of his tremendous abilities. They wouldn't even make him leader. A Major Molyneaux or something was leader of the party. And I think those years, Member of Parliament for South Down, was… I think they were pretty grim years. And... he liked being back in the House of Commons, that is true, but I think that, you know, he knew that it was all over, that he had blown it. And he wasn't really even determining Ulster Unionist policy, because what he stood for was a kind of unity of the United Kingdom. He would have liked to abolish Stormont for good, have everyone represented in the Imperial Parliament, he probably called it... the old phrase. So he didn't even stand with them. He wasn't in favour of having a parliament at Stormont or this kind of thing. Didn't like it. Didn't like any of that kind of stuff. So he was basically out of sympathy with them. Then he organised one or two odd things, like all that mass resignation that took place at one stage... didn't do any good at all, just wasted a lot of time and money.
I think he was a very unhappy fellow. But of course, even more unhappy when he lost the seat in South Down, which he did eventually. And then he was like a man bereft. Oddly enough, I never really was close to Enoch, but because I used to see her socially at one or two things to do with Rab Butler and stuff, I got on well with his wife, Pamela. And it was Pamela who first said to me... I said, you know, it was after his defeat in the Commons, losing his seat... I said, 'How is Enoch?' And she said, 'He's like a man bereaved. He just doesn't know what to do', she said. I said, 'Well, couldn't they put him in the House of Lords?' She said, 'Well, I don't think Maggie Thatcher will ever do that'. And I think he wouldn't have accepted, to be fair to him. He'd been so rude about life peerages. They'd have had to come up with a hereditary peerage and offered him that. But of course, Thatcher had done that. She'd done it for Whitelaw. She'd done it for the ex-Speaker, hadn't she? Mr Speaker Thomas... Viscount Tonypandy, I think. And so she had done it before, but she wasn't going to do it for Enoch, in my view. And so he never got a peerage at all. I think that was mean. I think he should have. I mean, he was a great student of parliament. He really knew about the history of parliament. And I think not allowing him a peerage in the evening of his days was pretty mean-spirited. [...]
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6:38
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
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- published: 22 May 2018
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
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5:07
Anthony Howard - Advantages of being a public school boy in the army (6/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Advantages of being a public school boy in the army (6/41)
Anthony Howard - Advantages of being a public school boy in the army (6/41)
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- published: 22 May 2018
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I joined the army in January 1956... national serviceman. Joined the East Surrey Regiment, called up to, because I suppose that was where we were living. We were living in Epsom at the time, which is Surrey. Kingston Barracks, gloomy place. And did my basic training, not at Kingston, oddly enough. This is one of the myths about national service. People go on saying it even now: ‘The great thing about national service was you learned how the other half lived, all people mingling together’. Nuts to that. Totally untrue. After I think about a week or ten days, possibly, at Kingston Barracks, all those boys who’d been to public school and it basically was that... was the divide, were plucked out and taken down to Canterbury for the Leadership Squad or the Home Counties Brigade, I think. And we weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t just the Surreys. The Royal West Kents were there and that kind of thing. And we were plucked out and just separated from the others as being potential officer material. And, you know, there were, I think, very few grammar school boys, there were, sort of, Wykehamists and Harrovians and me from Westminster and stuff, and we did our basic training basically segregated from the general run of recruits and being, sort of, held in readiness to go to the War Office Selection Board, which you went to after, I think, about 12 weeks in the army, which was a place called Barton Stacey in Hampshire. And you were, sort of, confronted by a quite grand, sort of, dining area. Well, they see if you can handle a knife and a fork and that kind of thing. And then there was this awful kind of thing with planks, and, sort of... not really an assault course, but sort of putting things together: barrels across rivers and the rest of it. I was absolutely hopeless at that kind of thing, no good at all. But I think I decided early on that the thing to do was to look as if you were in charge and to shout out, ‘Come on number five, pull yourself together’, kind of thing.
And so I somehow managed to get through the War Office Selection Board, which was actually a miracle because I had written that… one of the… you had to write an essay, among other things and I wrote an essay about the colour bar, I think, saying, you know, I was against it in a, sort of, typical wet liberal way, and there was a major in the Grenadiers and he had this essay in front of him and I went into this interview with him and he said, ‘Sit down, Howard, sit down'. And I sat down. He said, ‘I want to put something to you'. He said, ‘You’re in church, your sister’s coming up the aisle and there’s a black man waiting for her at the altar. What are you going to do about it?’ I said, ‘Well, I won’t do anything about it’. He said, ‘You won’t do anything about it?’ And so I thought I’d blown it all at that point but luckily I think I gave a talk on something. You had to give a five-minute lecturette or something and that went reasonably well. So anyway, I came out of Eaton Hall... I came out of Wasby and then I had to go back to Kingston Barracks, not to Canterbury, where I was made... because I was waiting for a vacancy to occur at the officer cadet school at Eaton Hall... and I then had the most power I had in the army, I think. They made me post corporal and that meant that I saw everyone’s letters. And on the very first day, I realised what my power was, because the regimental sergeant major, a terrifying man who, sort of, frightened the life out of me in the ten days I was there before, said, ‘Come in laddie. And I want to say to you, laddie, if you see a letter with that writing on it, it comes straight to me in the orderly room, you understand? It doesn’t go to the married quarters'. And I thought, whoa, I know what that was about. And so from that moment on, I lived a charmed life, really. And it wasn’t only him but I think everyone was slightly, sort of the same, you know. But it was a very easy, cushy number. I had to go down once a week, I think, to turn the… there was a book of remembrance in the Kingston Parish Church and one of my duties was to go down there and turn the page of this book and undo the glass case. It was a very cushy number. [...]
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6:24
Anthony Howard - Beginnings (1/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Beginnings (1/41)
Anthony Howard - Beginnings (1/41)
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- published: 22 May 2018
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I was born in 1934... the 12th of February 1934, in, I think, a flat in Kensington - 24 Cheniston Gardens, which is off Kensington High Street. My dad was, at the time, a priest in charge of Christ Church, Victoria Road. He was an Anglican clergyman and it was a very posh neighbourhood in those days, sort of full of major generals and peers and all that kind of thing, and he wasn't vicar of it because the church came under the wing of St Mary Abbots, the main church in Kensington but he was curate in charge or priest in charge. And, I mean, such was it that my mum always told me (I don't know whether it's true) that when I was born, they got 350 woolly coats, which were absolutely useless, had to be given away, that the little baby could wear. But it was that kind of very much upper-class, Edwardian era, which lasted in places like Kensington much longer than people think. And that's where I spent the first two years of my life. Can't remember it at all, clearly, and then in 1936, we moved to Highgate, where my dad was made vicar of Highgate at St Michael's Church there and that's where, I suppose, my formative years were spent, the next ten years indeed, until 1946, until after the war. And we lived, I think, in a not very nice vicarage, which he'd actually had to acquire because the old vicarage was fallen down in Southwood Lane and I went first of all to various, sort of, kindergarten schools. And then, in about 1942 or thereabouts, I went to Highgate Junior School, which was the junior school of Highgate, which was a minor public school, I suppose, but perfectly adequate, and stayed there until '46 when my father moved again to Kensington and to St Peter's, Cranley Gardens, now defunct, or now not… I think it's now sort of taken over by the… oh, what are they called? I don't know. But it's no longer a Church of England church. And we were there for four years and then I went to school at Westminster, which was on the tube. And... I was a day boy at first, became a boarder by the end. That was at my education, partly because… I think this was very odd, they decided to send my sister away to school at Cheltenham Ladies' College and I was left at home on my tod as a boy, really rather lonely. And it became clear to me in time that if you wanted to make progress and, sort of, be in school plays and in, sort of, house teams and stuff, it wasn't much good leaving the school at five o'clock and therefore I agitated, and goodness knows how they afforded it, and I became a boarder. I imagine it must have been about 1948, '49, or something and stayed at Westminster until I went up to Oxford in 1952, to Christ Church. And that was, I suppose… oh it wasn't the end of my education, no, because I decided I wanted to be a barrister, and so I started, sort of… I read law at Oxford, great mistake, very sterile study law, very sterile academic study, anyway. And went… sort of, to eat dinners, you had to do to qualify to be a barrister. And I never, of course, went to the bar. But I was called. I was called to the bar. And I can still sign passports saying, barrister-at-law, that kind of thing. But I did practice a bit in the army, as a defending officer, because you had to do national service in those days. And I… I think they got to know, in the battalion, which was with the Royal Fusiliers, they got to know that Mr Howard is a trained barrister and therefore all the boys on sort of AWOL charges, absence without leave and that kind of thing, said, 'I'll have Mr Howard as my defending officer'. I was only a second lieutenant, but I did rather enjoy it, because it meant that you could stand up before this court-martial and say to your own company commander: 'Major Derkin, would you describe yourself as an experienced officer?' [He said] 'I think I may do that!' [I said] 'I see. Will you now look at this document, which is your annual report on Corporal Hayes Rosario, and compare it with what you just told the court, that he was a thoroughly unreliable NCO? You write here he was an ideal NCO. How do you reconcile those two?' It didn't do me any good in the officer's mess. They loathed it. But I did enjoy it, I think. And that was just two years. And when I came out of the army, I no longer wanted to be a barrister and that was partly because the army had turned me into a journalist. [...]
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5:12
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
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...
published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
2:48
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
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- published: 22 May 2018
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
5:23
Anthony Howard - Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)
Anthony Howard - Clement Attlee: the greatest Prime Minister of 20th century (20/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: To be a successful politician, it’s very difficult to say what you need. I mean, I think there’s no point in being a politician if you are not able to perform. I.e., if you’re hopeless as a speaker, forget about being a politician. If you are no good as a debater, forget about it. If you have complete kind of nondescript qualities, forget about it. I’ve said all that, and what do I now have to say?
Who was the greatest Prime Minister of the 20th century? Clement Attlee. Attlee had no kind of, sort of, you know, messianic qualities about him at all. He was a very poor speaker, he sounded as if he was sort of like a country bank manager, he couldn’t… he had no sense of command. I remember him coming to the Oxford Union once, and he made a long speech and the last words of it were, 'All men are brothers'. And he sat down. And it was hopeless, hopeless. His wife had the sense to go to the cinema while he was speaking, and only joined up with him afterwards. He was a very, very poor speaker. Yet, there he was. And in the politicians’ trade union, he is very highly regarded. People like Harold Macmillan thought he was a wonderful Prime Minister. And I think he was very good at being Prime Minister.
When the day he was elected… I may have told this story already, but Dalton wrote in his diary that night, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And the little mouse did lead them, and a very effective mouse he became.
So having said that, I mean I think I’m broadly right, but you have to make exceptions. Now how much is politics a performing art? I think probably I incline to overrate the performing side of it, but it seems to me to be a successful politician, you’ve got to be a bit of an actor. You’ve got to be able to lay on a performance. Now other people would say, no, no, what matters is intellectual firepower, and I think that does matter. You’ve got to be able to understand what’s going on, particularly in this day and age. You know, if you’re Minister of Defence or if you’re Chancellor of the Exchequer, you’ve got to understand what all these things are about, and they’re quite complicated. So intellectual firepower does come into it. But I think more important, myself, because there have been a lot of politicians with very little brain, but quite successful public careers behind them, and a lot of politicians with very big brains who’ve gone nowhere. Keith Joseph, poor old Keith Joseph, you know, great intellectual, but no good as a politician, in my view. Dick Crossman, to some extent, a very formidable intellect, but a failed politician, really.
So I don’t think intellect is as important, myself, as showmanship, as I might call it rudely. I think that’s all important, and of course if you want to go into public life, you must be a bit of an extrovert. It really won’t do if you’re shy and diffident and, you know, backing away from the limelight. None of that stuff will work if you want to go and be a public figure. So I’m amazed at the number of politicians there are who seem to me ill-equipped by nature for the trade they’ve chosen. And sometimes, they don’t do all that badly. But, you know, the really successful politicians, it seems to me, whether you choose Lloyd George or whether you choose Michael Heseltine or whether you choose Joseph Chamberlain, they’ve all been a bit of a showman, really, and that is an adequate, or an integral, part of the equipment of the successful politician.
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6:20
Anthony Howard - What went wrong for Michael Heseltine? (26/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - What went wrong for Michael Heseltine? (26/41)
Anthony Howard - What went wrong for Michael Heseltine? (26/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: What went wrong? Well, what went wrong, I suppose, was Margaret Thatcher. He and she never got on. I think partly Michael's fault. Michael is sufficiently old-fashioned to have hated the idea of having a woman boss. In that sense, he is like Soames Forsyte, as I mentioned. And therefore, the chemistry never worked. On the whole, she liked sort of good-looking men, but she didn't like Michael. And there came the great fall-out in 1986 over Westland. He resigned from the government. And of course, the great achievement, and I don't think people pay enough to this… that every other single person who fell out with Margaret and resigned, just sort of went into oblivion.
Michael was able, between those years, 1986, when he resigned, and 1990, when he ran against her for leadership, to keep himself in business. He flogged himself every Friday night around the, sort of, rubber chicken circuit. He went to ever constituency that would invite him. He kept his name in the frame. When people drew up odds as to who would be the next Prime Minister, he was usually right up there in the front. And that was, for a backbench MP, a very considerable achievement. And of course, one of the reasons why he could do it was because he was a very untypical member of parliament of his day and age, that he had made his fortune, and it had become a fortune again, before he went into the House of Commons. That meant he could afford to have a staff, he could afford to have a chauffeur. I mean, the driver who came with him out of the government service, is still with him, and, you know, not many MPs can be able to afford to say to their driver when they'd been a minister, 'Okay, George, are you going to come with me? I'll pay you from now on'. But Michael could do all that, and that was a great help, having that sort of independence of, you know, private wealth, which he'd all made himself, gave him.
So he did it. And he, I think, really did think, when it came to 1990, that he was in with a real chance. And the fact is, he would have become Prime Minister. That if the second ballot had been between Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine… when in the first ballot, she got 204 votes, he got 152, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that he would have won and she would have been defeated. Because she knew that, and all her cabinet colleagues knew that, that they forced her to stand down, and she really was arm-locked into standing down.
Then, of course, John Major came on the scene and that, for a number of Tory MPs, was enough. There'd been a change and therefore, when Major and Douglas Hurd threw their hats into the ring, it was really all over for Michael. He was, that day, driving to plant a tree, I think in the zoo, when this, sort of, bombshell announcement came, that Margaret Thatcher was giving up and was resigning. I think I once asked him, I said, you know, 'Did you know, from that moment on?' And he said, 'Yeah, I knew. I knew'. And he went through with it, he sort of dug up the earth, put the tree... planted it, but it must have been a pretty gruesome moment, and I think he was enough of a professional politician to know that his chances of beating Major, as opposed to beating Thatcher, were pretty slight. And as it was, his vote went down and he got about 130-odd votes, Major got 180 votes, Douglas Hurd got, sort of, 59 or 60 or something, but it was clear-cut enough for there not to be a second rerun, although technically Major hadn't met the requirements, which were... you know 15% majority and all that kind of thing. Nonetheless, it was clear that Major had got home. It was, of course, a tremendous injustice. I mean, I say nothing against John Major, very nice man. But any idea that Major has the talent that Michael has got, any idea that, you know, he was the kind of public powerful figure that Michael Heseltine was, was absolute nonsense. And I'm afraid the Tory party cut off its nose to spite its face, and was electing Major because they couldn't forgive the regicide, the person who plunged the dagger into the previous leader. They made a terrible mistake. [...]
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3:48
Anthony Howard - My appearance on 'Desert Island Discs' was disappointing (39/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - My appearance on 'Desert Island Discs' was disappointing (39/41)
Anthony Howard - My appearance on 'Desert Island Discs' was disappointing (39/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I think I was a great disappointment with that, with Sue Lawley, because she was doing it when I was doing it. And I think I asked for… I suppose I was influenced by having been in the army, and I asked for a camp bed (officers for the use of), which is what you have in the army. And I thought that rather than lie on the ground, this camp bed, and I think I asked also for a mosquito net, because that came with the camp bed, or you could have it added. And I thought if I was on this desert island, that would do. But I think that was really the influence of national service. And I wouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't been a national serviceman. Otherwise, I can't remember much about the programme. What you have to do, I think, if you do it, is you have to pace yourself. You have to say, take bits of music that correspond with the periods of your life, and I think I managed to do that, otherwise I would… I'm not terribly musical, so I wasn't an ideal choice, and I had things, you know, rather hackneyed things like, well, I don't know, the opera with some drinking song from whatever it is. Can't even remember what opera it is. But my wife was some help with it. She's much more musical than I am. But it was pretty…
Oh, I had a lot of speech, including a Nye Bevan speech, which I was delighted to put in. And they thought it was too short, but they let me have it. And I think I had, I had that other American… 'When You Are Old And Grey'. Dear, dear, what is his name? Plays the piano and twiddles, but that was almost speech. But it wasn't high classical music much, no. I mean, it had things even like 'Vivat Regina!', because having been at Westminster school, and that being the sort of coronation thing we sung, shouted out by the Queen's scholars. So we had all sorts of odd things. I enjoyed doing it. They were quite fun. I was quite old by the time I did it. I think I was… I'd certainly left 'The Times' by the time I did it, I think. Not giving up the columns, I'd left 'The Times' full-time, because I didn't spend.... you know, I spent six years in the Elysian Fields, rowing people across the Styx to their, sort of, obituary notices.
Odd job, that, but a job I quite enjoyed. Very much the hinge of journalism and history, being obits editor, and admittedly, it's an old man's job, because you… only if you're old can you, sort of, remember enough about the people who've died, but it was very much away from the mainstream of journalism, and I did it, I think, between 1993 and 1999, that's right. And a small staff, sort of three or four people, all, sort of, each day putting out the slab and laying out people on it. But I didn't find it unrewarding, and obits had a great vogue at one time. They suddenly became very fashionable. I think they've gone off a bit now, but for a period, mainly because of The Independent, I think, and because 'The Telegraph', under Montgomery Massinberd did, sort of, produce a new kind of art form, basically. He's dead now, poor chap. But I think we were fighting back against 'The Telegraph', that's one reason why I was hired to do it, because 'The Times' realised that they were being left standing by these new witty, funny notices that appeared in 'The Daily Telegraph', which it used not to do obits at all. And it's quite a feat to get them up to the standard they did, really, only starting in 1986, I think, whereas 'The Times' has done them for… well, not as long as people think. I think 'The Times' regular obits page started about 1920, so it hasn't even been going 100 years yet. But they did occasional pieces before, but that was sort of the death of the Duke of Wellingon, all that kind of thing, you know, the one-day specials.
6:59
Anthony Howard - Robin Cook was not leadership material (29/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Robin Cook was not leadership material (29/41)
Anthony Howard - Robin Cook was not leadership material (29/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Robin Cook was a really extremely formidable parliamentarian, a very good speaker. Very incisive and, when in opposition, some of those speeches he made were really terrific. He wasn’t an easy man. When I was editor of the 'New Statesman', I had to have somebody… or you had to have... a sort of MP who’d come into your Friday conferences and keep you informed on what was going on. And the first MP I asked, oddly enough, we’re now talking 1972, and he’d just become a member of parliament, was Neil Kinnock. And Neil was a director of 'Tribune'. He said he was a director of 'Tribune', and I said, 'Well, that is an impediment and I don’t think I could really have that'. And so I don’t know… so I then had Eric Heffer in, before Robin Cook. And Eric became a member of the government in '74, and Robin Cook was elected in '74, and he became the 'New Statesman', as it were, tame labour MP. And he came, really quite religiously, to every Friday conference we had. We always had a, sort of, policy, kind of planning-ahead conference on Friday, not so much for detail in the paper, but kind of the issues that we should be bearing in mind, should be addressing.
And he came to that. He was always very late. He was always a bit chaotic, I thought. He’d sort of arrive half an hour late, that kind of thing. And he was distinctly, in manner, pedagogic, and I didn’t find him immediately attractive at all. But he did the job and he wrote articles for us. He was always, I always thought, a bit sort of cavalier that… I remember once, he wrote a piece and I got a letter in, sort of, number of corrections and stuff. And I showed it to him, probably at the Friday conference, and said, 'What am I to do about this, Robin?' And he said, 'Oh, junk it... bin it. It’s ridiculous. Trivial point'. So I said, 'Well, I can’t do that. I mean, is he right or is he wrong?' He said, 'Oh, well, it doesn’t matter'. And I was a bit taken aback by that, that, you know, if somebody catches you out, you have to actually say, well, he’s right, you'd better put it in the paper and I’ll put at the bottom, sorry, got it wrong, or something. But he… I did put it in the paper, but he wasn’t at all pleased, and thought it should just be ignored. So he was a difficult man.
I had met him first when he was a lecturer at Edinburgh University, and I’d gone up to talk to the Labour Club there or something. That’s when I first met him. He was then a prospective candidate. And he seemed to me, even in those days, rather like a garden gnome, but he was a good speaker. And of course, I think his tragedy was that if he had, sort of, had the bearing and looks and the appearance of, say, Tony Blair, he would have become leader of the party. The only reason why he was always, sort of, not considered seriously, was because he had this sort of red beard and he was rather small and he had a slightly, sort of, bad voice, too, for politics. Slightly high-pitched and… but as I say, he was a very effective orator. But I think he was always a bit miffed, because after all, he’d gone to the House of Commons nine years before Tony Blair. Tony Blair wasn’t elected until 1983. Robin Cook was elected 1974. So he shouldn’t even have been considered leadership material. It must have been a bit hurtful.
I don’t know what his relations were like with Tony Blair. Of course, his very brave resignation over Iraq obviously poisoned them, but he was right about that, and Blair was wrong. I don’t think they were ever close. Blair admired his skill as a speaker, and certainly sent him a hero-gram in that arms… was it? was the Arms for Iraq scandal, you know, the great report where he made his great speech for the opposition frontbench. And he used… I think he used to have it on his wall in his office, this, sort of hero-gram that Blair sent him for that performance, which was remarkable. But I don’t think they were ever close. [...]
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Tiny Rowland
Roland "Tiny" Rowland (27 November 1917 – 25 July 1998) was a British businessman and chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate from 1962 to 1994. He gained fame from a number of high-profile takeover bids, in particular his bid to take control of Harrods.
Early life
Roland was born Roland Walter Fuhrhop on 27 November 1917 during World War I in a British internment camp for aliens in India. His mother was Anglo-Dutch and his father was a German trader. As the Fuhrhops were refused entry in to the United Kingdom following the end of the First World War, that family settled in Hamburg, Germany. He was said to have been nicknamed "Tiny" by his mother because of his large size. In the 1930s, he was briefly in the Hitler Youth.
Emigrates to UK
His father, who despised Adolf Hitler, moved the family to the United Kingdom in 1937, where his son attended Churcher's College, Hampshire.
Rowland then worked for his uncle's shipping business in the City of London. He took his uncle's surname, 'Rowland' on his 22nd birthday. On the outbreak of World War II, he was conscripted into the British Army, where he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. As enemy aliens, his parents were interned on the Isle of Man, where his mother died. He himself was interned as an enemy alien after trying to arrange for the release of his father.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Tiny_Rowland
5:55
Anthony Howard - Journalists admire politicians who make a splash and cut a dash (19/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Journalists admire politicians who make a splash and cut a dash (19/41)
Anthony Howard - Journalists admire politicians who make a splash and cut a dash (19/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: It’s very hard, isn’t it? I mean, the politicians journalists admire are all those who make a splash and cut a dash. Not necessarily does that make you admired by your own colleagues. I mean, the last person that one would think was in any way glamorous was Mr Attlee, who presided over the Labour government from '45 to '51. Most working politicians, who maybe… there are many of them dead by now, but who knew anything about Attlee would have put him almost top of 20th century Prime Ministers, but that was without any gifts of showmanship or anything like that. But that was the view from within. I think the view from without would always be that Churchill was a much greater Prime Minister than Attlee. I think he was a greater war Prime Minister, I think that’s probably true. Attlee wasn’t a war... he was Deputy Premier in the war, but I think as a peacetime Prime Minister, Attlee left Churchill standing. Churchill wasn’t a very effective peacetime Prime Minister between '51 and '55. He was too old, he ended up being over 80. I mean... ridiculous. But... so I think it’s not just the flashy qualities, but it is, of course, this sense being a politician is being a performer. It is the politician who can make a phrase, deliver a dazzling speech, who attracts attention.
Why do we talk about Nye Bevan? Because he was a wonderful orator. Superb orator, both on the platform and in the House of Commons. Why do people like me, of my age, still sort of remember Iain Macleod? Because he was a wonderful speaker. And... he wasn’t much good on telly, because... see that’s a different technique, but on a public platform, from the frontbench in the House of Commons, he was, you know, far and away the best orator in the Conservative Party. On the other hand, you take someone like Rab Butler, a most faithful servant of the Conservative Party, down 40 years. No, never a great performer, never a tremendous orator. Harold Macmillan, on the other hand, could do it. He was a showman. He knew how to do it.
But it is, I think... to go into politics and not have any of the showman qualities, which is what Attlee did, is taking a very high risk. The day Attlee became leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Dalton, who was a pretty ghastly old brute, an Old Etonian Labour MP, wrote in his diary, 'And a little mouse shall lead them'. And, you know, in a sense, Dalton was right, Attlee did look like a little mouse. But my goodness, that mouse roared and went on to lead the Labour Party for 20 years. 20 years! And be Prime Minister twice. So I think Dalton really got it wrong, but that’s how Attlee was regarded.
And some of the more flashy characters, of course, don’t make it at all. I mean I don’t want to be able to go into private grief, but someone like Jonathan Aitken looks as if he came out of a sort of political novel, but his whole career came to grief. And that has tended to happen with perhaps the more flashy political operators. John Stonehouse, remember too, who went to jug, too. So I think it’s a high-level, high-wire act. And I can’t quite see what’s so attractive to it to someone who wants to be a quiet administrator. And you can do that as a civil servant. Why buy into the public dimension if you’re not very happy with it? And of course, most politicians are, I think, show-offs, and even if they’re not very talented, they think they are, and they think they’re Demosthenes when they’re not. But on the whole, I think you’ve got to have a part of your makeup... there has to be part actor. And it’s quite important, the acting side of politics, I think. And above all, because after all, speech is your trade, that’s what you’re engaged in, I think you’ve got to be a good speaker. And if you can’t, it’s rather pathetic.
I mean, there have been some very, very bad politicians who just couldn’t put one word next to the other. Frank Cousins, who became, sort of, cabinet minister in the Wilson government, absolutely hopeless. People like Fred Mulley, who was a long-serving Labour cabinet minister, hopeless at making speeches. Those who tend to capture the public imagination are people like Barbara Castle. And Barbara Castle was a splendid speaker, really was very, very good. My goodness, she was an actress. She understood all about dress and appearance and all the rest of it, but she was really a performing politician.
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3:51
Anthony Howard - Never meeting Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister (28/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Never meeting Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister (28/41)
Anthony Howard - Never meeting Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister (28/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: So as I say, I never saw her in all the time she was Prime Minister, I never saw her. She would… I mean, I saw her in the House of Commons, but I never had any private interview or anything. She was very vindictive, as a matter of fact. For example, no reason why she should have asked me, but Donald Trelford, who was editor of The Observer at time, we’d been rather critical of Mark Thatcher and his goings-on with Cementation and contracts and this kind of thing, and all the time that I was at The Observer as number two to Donald, not one single invitation to Number 10 came to the editor of The Observer. That was because we were considered to have behaved very badly over the Mark Thatcher business, we were absolutely right came out [unclear], but she was vindictive in that way. And I really had no dealings with her at all until… Oh, I leave one thing out. I did have dealings with her at a press conference.
1979, Conservative Central Office. For some reason, the Conservatives had left open the possibility in their election manifesto, of restoring capital punishment. They hadn’t said they would do it, but they said there’d be a free vote on the restoration of capital punishment. And so I took it upon myself at this press conference to ask a question. She was then leader of the opposition, to say, 'Mrs Thatcher, this reference to capital punishment in that manifesto, is that to give your own self the freedom to vote in favour of hanging? Is that what lay behind it?' 'Mr Howard, only you would ask a question like that. Next'.
So I didn’t do myself any good with that, either. But she then, very sweetly, as a matter of fact, when I was doing a radio series about prominent politicians, for Radio 4, in I think it must have been 1999 or something like that, or perhaps… anyway, she’d long since… she’d become a back number and she was now Lady Thatcher in the House of Lords, I think I wrote to her and said, look, Keith Joseph is one of the people I’ve chosen, and could I come and talk to you about Keith Joseph? And she immediately wrote back and said, of course, I’d be delighted to talk about Keith. And she did have a tremendous feeling of the debt of obligation she owed Joseph. Hadn’t been helped by the fact that, although Joseph joined her cabinet, he was not a great success, and eventually left, as, I think Secretary of State for Industry, where he’d really been rather a failure. Or did he…? No, I think he left as Minister of Education. He was Industry, he moved from Industry to Education, I think. But he hadn’t been a success. He was a great genuine intellectual, he used to agonise...'Oh God, oh dear...' And she, I think, felt guilty about him, because she thought the leadership had been his inheritance.
Anyway, she saw me that day in that grand, sort of, residence she had… not residence, sort of Embassy place, which was her office in Chesham Place. And she was very nice and very sweet and there was a young man there. But I did notice that her mind wasn’t what it was, and I’m afraid that, even though it’s long before she was declared to be, sort of, no longer going to make speeches or stuff, it was perfectly clear that she wasn’t quite right. That she’d lose the thread in what she was saying, this kind of thing. But as I say, she couldn’t have been more charming, and it was very good of her to do it for me. And I think she did it for Keith, not for me. Keith was already dead by then. But I thank her for that and am grateful for that. That really was the last contact I had with her, and, as I say, my contacts with her were pretty intermittent down the years, and I don’t think she… if she had known that I was a friend of Michael Heseltine, that would have added to my sins, so it was probably well she didn’t know that, really, and I don’t suppose she knew that.
But of course, I had been, and was also when Michael resigned, you know, I was very much on Michael’s side over Westland and all that. And I suppose what I wrote about her was, on the whole, pretty critical in The Observer, too, and that can’t have helped.
6:38
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
Anthony Howard - The state of Britain? (35/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I'm hopeless on the state of Britain questions. I think they're the most boring books that have been written, called The State of Britain and all the rest of it. What would I say, though?
I mean, I'd say that in many ways, we've made a lot of progress. That when I look back, you know, it is amazing that when I went to the press gallery in the House of Commons in 1958, I was only about 23 years old, one quarter of the Conservative Party, the governing party, came from the same school. One quarter of Conservative MPs were Old Etonians. We went on to have three Prime Ministers on the trot who came from the same school. We went on to have Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home. In succession, three Old Etonians. Now I'm not against Mr Cameron being an Old Etonian, good luck to him. But I don't think we'll ever see David Cameron succeeded by two other schoolfellows again. So, in some ways, we've made progress.
We've also made progress, I think, in terms of representation of minorities. Not good enough yet in the House of Commons. Not good enough for women, certainly not good enough for ethnic minorities, but we've made progress and things are better off than they were. Where have we slipped back? I think we've slipped back in creating a Brahmin caste, who are quite different from the rest of us. And this Brahmin caste are the people who become politicians, who go into politics. They're picked off like, say, the Dalai Lama or something, at a very tender age, go into the Conservative Research Department, go into the Trade Union Research Department, and they're about 21. And they've never done anything else in their lives. Never, ever. Now we've already got a civil service that consists of a Brahmin caste, that's how they're recruited. They're sort of recruited from the moment they leave the university, and they spend the next 40 years in Whitehall. Do you want to duplicate that with those who are meant to be the people in the front office? I can't see the point of it. It seems to me that it was better, though some people think it was very old-fashioned, that when I first became a journalist, if you went to the House of Commons, you were enormously… saw all these brigadiers on the backbenches, you saw all these, sort of, Rear Admirals. You saw businessmen, even. You saw people who were, sort of, Sheffield Master Cutler and this kind of thing. None of that exists today. There is no one in politics, really, who's come up the hard way. There is that guy who's in the cabinet... Johnson, I think... he's been a postman and became General Secretary of the Post Office Workers Union. But that's very unusual. When I first went into the press gallery, you looked down and there were quite a lot of ex-union leaders on the floor of the House of Commons. I mean, Bevan blazed the way, but after that there were Alf Robens, people like that. None of that exists anymore. Instead of which, we have a caste, a cadre, that has been sort of trained from the word go, who have never known any other life but the life of being in politics, who have no experience of the world outside, who, I think, are… and I think this is where the political class is rapidly growing apart from the general public, because it is so secluded.
And that, certainly, is one place where, at least I think have got worse rather than better. And it happened, I think, largely by accident. We've had one or two throwbacks along the way. Somebody like Michael Heseltine belongs to the old dispensation. You make your money, you become a businessman, then go into politics. People don't do that anymore. Probably he's the last one we shall see of that kind of person. They may take a job in PR, like David Cameron, with some television company or something. Basically, they've done nothing except what they know about. They become… I think this may be one of the troubles, it may go back to these special advisors that were invented. Not really until about the 19… beginning of the 1970s, I think, or thereabouts, that you got this sort of recruited young men, bright young men, who went to work for secretaries of state here and there, and they immediately got bitten by the bug, so they wanted to become secretaries of state themselves, and therefore they became, first of all, MPs. [...]
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2:48
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
Anthony Howard - Tony Blair - a Tory in disguise? (31/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I saw him not very often, when he was Prime Minister. I suppose at most… perhaps… I was writing a column in 'The Times' at the time, so I think he paid a certain amount of… not… I always used to, sort of, apply, say could I see him? And I saw him about once a year, kind of thing. He was always very pleasant, affable. Not, I thought, sort of termed it, thought-provoking. And I suppose I'd never quite got over the impression that there was something lightweight about him. And I was never among his greatest admirers. I was never among New Labour's greatest kind of advocates or supporters, but he was… I liked him, he was attractive, he was pleasant and he also was a very good performer. I mean, there's no doubt about it that as a speaker, there's enough of an actor in Tony Blair to make him a very considerable performer indeed. And that one can't take away from him. But even his speech in defence of the war in Iraq, which was the… you know, a tremendous oratorical performance in the Commons. Even those who disagreed with it had to admit it. And he was equally good at the party conference. He took infinite pains with his party conference speech and, you know, he was always effective. But I don't know. I suppose that I belong to those who thought that, in a sense, he was a Tory in disguise or something. I never felt at home with him in that sense. And of course, I had known a lot of Labour leaders, going back to Hugh Gaitskell. And he seemed to me to be the least Labour-minded of all those people. And I used to be offended by people like Mandelson saying, 'I'm perfectly relaxed about people being filthy rich'. I think one of the times when I saw him as Prime Minister, I said, 'Are you really telling me that it doesn't worry you that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider'. He said, 'No, no, it doesn't worry me. What matters is everyone's becoming more prosperous'.
And I did find that very hard to take, that it seems to be one of the jobs the Labour party is in business to do, is to make sure that the gap shrinks, that there isn't that kind of inequality. I mean, what did Gaitskell believe in? Gaitskell believed in equality. A very old-fashioned doctrine now, but there's not a tithe in Tony Blair's being that thinks that equality is important. So we were never, I suppose, natural soulmates. I haven't… have I seen him... I don't think I've seen him once... shows that I'm a not a natural soulmate... since he ceased to be Prime Minister. I don't think I've talked to him on any occasion. And I've no doubt he doesn't feel any great sense of deprivation, but nor, frankly, do I.
5:28
Anthony Howard - Being fascinated by politics for a long time (13/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Being fascinated by politics for a long time (13/41)
Anthony Howard - Being fascinated by politics for a long time (13/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I find it very hard to know why I first became interested in politics. My father and mother had no interest in politics, really. I think my father was a liberal conservative, he was entirely opposed to capital punishment and things like that. He thought the whole Suez expedition in 1956, which I was engaged in as a national serviceman, was absolute, if not criminal, was at least lunacy. And he was quite right, of course. My mother, I think, eventually became a kind of… possibly even on my account, occasionally a Labour voter, but probably much more likely SDP material. I think my father probably always voted Conservative.
So where did it come from? I don’t really know. I was at school at Westminster with the son of a man who, at that stage, was very much, sort of, persecuted in the press, and that was John Strachey, who was the Minister of Food in the Labour Government at that time. And Charles Strachey, who was in the same house as I was, you know, I began to feel, sort of, rather protective towards him, because every day brought these terrible headlines about his dad in all the papers and all the rest of it. And so I think it was when I was at school that I converted from being, you know, a conventional schoolboy Tory, really, to being a supporter of the Labour Party. I didn’t join the Labour Party until, I think, just before I went to Oxford when I was 18. And I suppose the interest in politics came from, at that stage, to have been trained to be a political activist, that I became the youngest prospective parliamentary candidate in the country when I was 22, I think. Admittedly a hopeless seat, where my dad was vicar in Epsom. The seat was Epsom and Ewell. And I think it was first of all wanting to play the game, and then when that didn’t prove possible, mainly because of journalism... in those days it was very hard to ride the two horses of journalism and, at least it was in the Labour Party, because the Labour Party had gotten very suspicious of journalists. And so not playing the game, but becoming a kind of analyser and, you know, a spectator at it, was my… what happened.
And I think I did go on being fascinated by politics for a long time. But I remember thinking one of the attractions of America was that American politics was much, much more fun and more rewarding to study than British politics, in that they were so many more permutations. You become a governor of a state, you become a senator, you become, you know, a congressman, mayor of New York, mayor of Chicago. So there really were many more options open to you, whereas in Britain, all roads lead to Westminster. And you will not prosper unless you become an MP. And then, of course, it’s just the luck of the draw whether you’re… the tide is running with your party, which means that your party’s in government, and indeed whether you attract the favour of the leader of your party who, if the party is in government, will be Prime Minister. And I’ve known lots of politicians of great ability who’ve never really made it to the top at all.
I mean, let’s take the example of Dick Crossman. Brilliant man. Been an Oxford don, ran psychological warfare in wartime, elected to parliament for a safe seat in Coventry in 1945. And with one very brief, I think, period of about two months, when he sat on the Opposition frontbench when Gaitskell was still leader of the party, he had no kind of opportunity to shine on his frontbench at all. Never was given a job by Attlee during the period of the Attlee government, except somebody, I think it was Gaitskell, went to see Attlee once, said, 'I think you ought to do something for Dick Crossman. He’s very able, you know'.' Not a question of ability', he said, 'question of character. That’s the trouble there'. So Attlee didn’t like him, and that was partly because he’d been to… he’d been a friend of his parents, and he thought Dick had behaved in a very overbearing way as a young Wykehamist scholar, and as a young undergraduate. And he didn’t like him, so he’d taken against him in a big way.
So, you know, 19 years sitting there on the backbenches before becoming a minister. Much the same, too, of Barbara Castle, who… you know, she waited all that time to get into the cabinet. Now, it’s true they were very lucky. [...]
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5:18
Anthony Howard - Two masters at school who had enormous influence on me (2/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Two masters at school who had enormous influence on me (2/41)
Anthony Howard - Two masters at school who had enormous influence on me (2/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: There were two masters at school who had enormous influence on me. One was not an intellectual at all but when I went to Westminster in 1946, he was my first form master. His name was Stephen Lushington. He’s still alive, aged 90+ and he taught English and he’d been… he was a very colourful figure. He’d been in the army during the war. He had occasion to wear a, kind of, scarlet sweater and his 'British warm'. He’d been Secretary of the Oxford University Dramatic Society at Oxford and he used to produce all the school plays. So even after I’d passed out of his care as a teacher because he was the director of the school plays, I saw a lot of him, and he used to produce me in all these plays. A great man. Very bad luck. Should have certainly become a headmaster. I once asked a headmaster of Westminster, why Stephen never became a headmaster. And he was a rather gloomy man… called Walter Hamilton, who’d become a headmaster of Rugby, and a tremendous, sort of, power and patronage he had. And I said, 'Mr Hamilton, why did Stephen never get a headship?' 'Oh', he said, ‘he would keep marrying these women’. I don’t know who else he was meant to marry but he did have about four wives, it’s true, and that wasn’t a terribly good qualification to be a headmaster. But he was an inspired teacher, and as I say, he was not a great intellect but he knew how to teach.
The other one was an intellect, he was the senior history master at Westminster, called Charles Kealey, who was a, you know, don manqué, and he’d failed to get a fellowship at an Oxford college and he… so I think the first time I ever heard him, he came into the seventh form, as it was in those days, classroom, and he said, 'Well, you may wonder why I’m with you here today’. And we thought… 'Well, I’ll tell you why it is. I went to dinner at Christ Church and they said, 'How are you, Mr Kealey?' And I said, 'Very nice, thank you'. And that’s why I’m here today, teaching you boys’. So he had a sense of humour and a sense of fun, but he was… he was a genuine intellectual. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a great writer.
I got myself into terrible trouble. He was a great authority on Origen, the early church father, and I suddenly saw, when I was editor of the 'New Statesman', that a book about Origen was coming out. And so I said to the literary editor, 'Look, you probably wouldn’t normally review this but do me a favour. I want this Westminster schoolmaster to review it and, you know, and it’ll be a great act of kindness and an act of piety on my part. I want it done'. So… Claire Tomalin, she was, my literary editor, she said alright, 'Shall I write to him?' I said, 'It’d better come from you rather than me’. So she did and about ten days later, she came to me, holding a, sort of, a piece of exercise paper and said, 'Tony, it’s hopeless. We can’t use this’. And I said, ‘Well, we can’t possibly not use it. Sorry. Give it to me’. And so I then worked on it and tried to improve it and liven it up a bit, and I gave it to her and said, 'Put it in’. We put it in the review and with very bad feeling she did. But that was my paying my debt to Charles Kealey in a way.
No, he was… he stayed at Westminster for years, and became a housemaster, which was a surprise to a lot of people, I think, but he became quite a successful housemaster for his house, and then he became the school archivist. I mean, his whole career was at Westminster. And I’ve never forgiven that very fashionable headmaster, John Rae, in that Charles’ great ambition was to write the school history and I think he did a synopsis or may even have done the first two chapters, and he showed them to Rae and Rae said they were hopeless. Now, I’ve said that his review was hopeless so maybe Rae was right but, you know, it was an act of real brutality and unkindness, and it was given to somebody else who did it pretty inadequately, in my view. And I’ve always held that against John Rae, and indeed when I wrote his – Charles Kealey’s – obit in 'The Times', I especially put that in, about how Rae had said no, he couldn’t be the school historian, how terribly hurt he’d been by this. Then they reproduced 'The Times' obit with permission in 'The Elizabethan', the school magazine, and damn me, they’d taken out the whole of that bit about… it wasn’t there. It disappeared as if it had never been. [...]
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3:36
Anthony Howard - When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade (22/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade (22/41)
Anthony Howard - When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade (22/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I mean, Polly Toynbee is an outstanding example of a journalist who’s basically concerned, I think she wouldn’t take it amiss, with giving her own views, and they’re trenchant views, and they’re strong views, and I think she has as much influence as a cabinet minister, perhaps more than most women cabinet ministers, anyway. And it’s not just her. I mean, there’s a lady been writing for many years in the 'Daily Mail' called Ann Leslie. Now Ann Leslie is very trenchant in what she has to say. Of course, nowadays, which journalists didn’t have in the past, they all have the opportunity of appearing on television.
And someone like Polly seems hardly to be off the box, and Ann Leslie does a great deal of programmes like 'Question Time'... normally have one journalist on. And all that wasn’t there. I mean, it seems to me extraordinary to remember, but when I started out, journalism was an anonymous trade. If you looked at the paper, certainly in the quality market, it would say, 'By our diplomatic correspondent', 'By our political correspondent', 'By our labour correspondent'. No one got a by-line. Now we don’t only have by-lines, we have sodding great features, photographs of the person who’s writing the story. So it has all changed enormously. And I think one of the things that brought about that change was the belief by newspaper managements that it did them good if their own staff appeared on radio or television. And years ago, when I used to work on 'The World at One', I was always staggered that papers like the 'Financial Times' would send you a list of their experts... their specialists in various fields, to encourage you to put them… that’s just sound radio, puff puff radio. And now, I think some people are judged, you know, as to how successful they are by how much they actually appear on the box.
I was very struck the other day; I was looking through a list of some sort of trade paper called 'All Politics' [sic] or something, of the 100 best-known political correspondents. And I read it with some interest. And I suddenly realised that on it didn’t once appear the doyen of all political correspondents, Alan Watkins. Why? Because Watkins does very little broadcasting. On it didn’t appear Bruce Anderson. Well, Bruce Anderson doesn’t do much broadcasting, he wasn’t on it. So now if you’re going to make your name as a political journalist, you really have, I think, to have a regular spot or something, at least to be... appear on Newsnight, appear on at least News 24 [sic] on BBC, appear on Sky Television. People like Michael White appear on Sky all the time, 'The Guardian's Michael White, and that’s what gives them their kind of public identity. And I think newspaper managements realised that, and I’ve often wondered about this, why did they move from anonymity to absolutely glorying by-lines, and I think it was because they thought this was a way of getting free advertising off the airwaves, and every time you say, and with me is so-and-so of such-and-such paper, and that is considered free advertising for the paper. And therefore they had no choice but to give up the whole discreet thing, and certainly, as I say, when I went to 'The Guardian', one by-line used to appear every day. If you wrote the leader page article, which was on the page which had the leaders on it, and had the letters down below, you actually got your by-line. It would say, by Anthony Howard. That was the only place in the paper, when I started, where a name of a journalist appeared, and the prize of writing the LPA was that you saw your name in print. Otherwise, it was always, 'By our own reporter'.
4:00
Anthony Howard - Accepting that I would not become a politician (14/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Accepting that I would not become a politician (14/41)
Anthony Howard - Accepting that I would not become a politician (14/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: And of course, frankly, being an MP is not, and a lot of people won’t like this, but it is not really a full-time job, however assiduous you are with your constituency. If it were a full-time job you couldn’t possibly be an MP and be a minister. Because a minister is a full-time job. And I think most politicians think that the only thing that counts is actually, you know, being in charge of a government department. And that’s what you wait for and that’s what you hope for. And, of course, in a sense, you know, you have a better chance of getting there than perhaps you do, as a journalist of becoming an editor, because there are what? Now about 23 members of the cabinet, they’ve all got departments to run, and they’re not… well, they’re… I don’t think there are 23 national newspaper editors. Obviously, with provincial ones, there are, but if you want to edit a national newspaper, you’ve got less chance, really, than if you want to be a cabinet minister.
But I don’t know. I suppose the fascination started off with, as I say, wanting to be a politician myself, then realising, and accepting that it wasn’t going to work, because the moment I suppose I went to the 'New Statesman' to... in 1961... although it was a left-wing paper, I think that people thought, well, you know, he’s decided to be a journalist. And it was all right when I was on 'Reynold’s News', because that was okay, I was a Labour candidate at the same time, but I had to give that up when I went to work for 'The Guardian', because, quite rightly, Alastair Hetherington, the editor of 'The Guardian' made it a condition of my employment that I must give up being a Labour candidate. He said, 'Look, I may believe that you’re being straight and honest, but the readers won’t'. The readers will write in and say, can we be surprised that your reporter writes... because in those days we didn’t have any by-lines... as we all know, he is himself a prospective Labour candidate. He said, 'I can’t have that, so you must sacrifice it and give it up'. And it wasn’t a great sacrifice, because it wasn’t a seat I had the faintest hope of winning. But I think from that moment on, I realised that you couldn’t ride the two horses. So, to be fair, to my own folly, I suppose, I did, when I left the 'New Statesman' as editor, which I became in 1972 and stayed there six years, when I left in 1978, I did make some rather timid attempts to, sort of, get back on to the political horse and wrote off to one or two constituencies and was even interviewed here and there, but never, I think, at the level of a full selection conference.
But it became clear to me that, such was the suspicion of journalism and of the, sort of, you know, anti-Labour bias of all journalists, that it wasn’t going to succeed. And when it became clear that I wouldn’t have got a seat in the 1979 election, I gave that aspiration up. Thank goodness I did, because stretching ahead, though I didn’t know that at the time, were 14 years of Labour… 18 years, no 18 years of Labour in opposition. And I think that I would have felt pretty frustrated if, at the age of 46, I’d gone into the House of Commons and had to sit there until I was over pensionable age, 65, knowing I’d never get office because simply the tide was not with the Labour Party at that time. It wasn’t until 1997 that Tony Blair won the election of that year, ending an 18-year exile from power of the Labour Party. And if I had gone into the House at the time… and some of my friends tried very much to help me. People like Roy Hattersley tried very hard on my behalf, and kind of people like that. Then, you know, what I’d have sentenced myself to would have been much less rewarding than running the 'New Statesman' had been. And indeed, then later on, which I went on to edit 'The Listener' and then I went to 'The Observer', so I think they’d have been much less fulfilling years than they were by returning to journalism. [...]
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2:55
Anthony Howard - Old age and death (41/41)
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published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Old age and death (41/41)
Anthony Howard - Old age and death (41/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: Old age is horrid and I don't think you should pretend otherwise. It's no fun, your faculties start failing, you… that's true of your physical faculties as well as any mental ones. And it is, I think… there's no... I don't want to live to be 90 or anything like that. Everyone I know at that... all says I wish I could die. And I think, you know, you ought… I'm frightened, no doubt of… everyone's frightened of death, but I hope I'm not frightened of death as such. I think I'm frightened of the illness and the pain, and that kind of thing, but if I could just heel over, would I mind all that much? I don't know. I was brought up a Christian, of course, I'm afraid now I'm an agnostic, so I don't really believe in life after death or anything like that. Of course, my father did, because he was a clergyman, and that was the whole background I had. But I would… I think probably life after the age of 80 isn't much fun. I'm now 74, so we haven't got long to go on the last lap, final furlong.
And I don't think retirement's much fun, either. I think a lot of people look forward to retirement all their lives, they've got rather dull jobs. But then when they actually embark on it, they don't find it very rewarding and there are an amazing number of people who die very rapidly after they retire, even if they've had drab jobs. It was the job that kept them going. I'm lucky still, in that I do write occasional bits here and there. I do occasional broadcasts here and there. So I'm not entirely unemployed, though the income has dwindled, I'm afraid, drastically, and that's always a slight worry, even if you've made provision, as I've tried to do by sort of private pension schemes and that kind of thing. But it's not the same as being as well paid as you are as a columnist. And once that dries up, you've… you know, you feel the pinch. But I shouldn't whine or grizzle or complain. I'm much better off than most, as I say.
I tend to believe that death is the end, but I'm not, sort of, 99% convinced that is true. I, you know, I could be wrong about that, and I might get an agreeable surprise, although no doubt I'll be punished for not having believed it. But I think that, you know, it's true that most, sort of, doctrines of, you know, eternal life defy human comprehension, but it could be. It could be that it's right. I certainly… I suppose when I was young, I believed it was, being brought up in a vicarage, a rectory and places like that. And I've drifted away from it. Still go to church, but that's largely sort of out of custom, I think, and aesthetic appreciation of church services and stuff. But I don't go as an active believer.
5:12
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
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...
published: 22 May 2018
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
Anthony Howard - Enoch Powell 'had the air of the fanatic' (33/41)
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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]
TRANSCRIPT: I can't remember when I first met Enoch Powell. I think it was long before 'Rivers of Blood' and that kind of thing. He was, of course, an extremely awkward colleague for Ted Heath in the shadow cabinet, long before the row took place over race. In 1966, he made a speech during the election, which oddly enough was against the Vietnam War, and he said, in that voice of his, he said, 'Not since the Secret Treaty of Dover...', which not many people in his audience could ever have heard of, but... has there been so, sort of, humiliating a deal done by a leader of the British nation with a foreign nation. The Secret Treaty of Dover was all to do with Louis XIV, this was to do with LBJ and Wilson. So he was very strange. I mean, he was, at that moment, I think, Shadow Minister of Defence. And Ted and he never got on, of course, but Enoch Powell was a very considerable figure. One of the odd things I used to do, and I don't know why, I used to get asked to an election dinner every year at Westminster School, where the game is that you actually, sort of, make up Greek or Latin epigrams and have them sort of slung in and read out. No one else could play the game, but Powell was brilliant. And he was, as a classicist... you know, he'd been a professor at the age of 23 or something in Australia admittedly, but he was very, very brilliant. And he kept all that scholarship up. I know that, because I used to go to his house, mainly for, sort of, radio interviews and stuff, but the bookshelves were heaving with classical texts.
Now I had, I think, a great, sort of, feeling of alienation from him, from the moment in 1968 that he made the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And I used to say that I would be prepared to have any kind of conservative MP wanting to write for the 'New Statesman', writing in it if the article is good enough, but I said there's one exception to that: I would not have Enoch Powell. I think, looking back, I was wrong, but there was something about Enoch. There was the air of the fanatic, you see, that there was… I mean, those eyes, and he didn't seem to me to be a fully paid-up member of the human race, I have to say. And that, I think, with even people with greater knowledge of him than I had, people like Ian Macleod, said, you know, the trouble with Enoch is that he's led astray by the remorselessness of his own logic, and you have to get off the train before he crashes it into the bumpers.
And I think there was something about Enoch that was odd. On the other hand, he was a very considerable speaker, no great assets in terms of voice or anything like that, but he really knew how to make a powerful speech. I heard him, and this was very early on indeed, a speech he made in 1958, about the killing of the Kenyans in the time of the Kikuyu and all that stuff, in a... what was basically a concentration camp run by the Kenyan police. And he spoke in the House of Commons. I don't know why I was there, but I was, very early in the morning, about sort of 1:30am or something. And said, you know, we are told that these men are subhuman. So be it, he said, and went on to develop an argument from there. It was powerful stuff. Again, you know, here was he, more than any other person, standing up for the rights of black Africans. So it was hard to, sort of, make a racist out of him. I don't think he ever was a racist myself, at all. I think there were other members of the Tory party who were racist. I don't think Enoch was. But he could sound like one. And of course, it was bitter beyond belief that, I think from the moment Ted became leader of the Conservative Party, Enoch was really unhinged. Enoch stood for the leadership at the same time as Ted did. Ted got about, I think, 137 votes or something, Reggie Maudling got 120, Enoch Powell got 15. And I think this ate into his soul. He knew in every sense that he was an abler man than Ted Heath. And I think every morning, he looked at himself in the shaving mirror and he said, why is that booby leader of the Tory Party and why am I not? I think it really got to him. He had a kind of de Gaulle complex. He knew that he could save the nation, or thought he knew he could save the nation. And I think it ate him up, and that's why I think that, when Ted actually won that 1970 election, he was mightily… more disappointed than Harold Wilson. And for him, it was curtains. That he knew that if Ted had lost that election, he would be back in contention and the party might well turn to him. But when Ted won this election by a comfortable majority, 35 seats or something, in 1970, Powell knew it was the end for him.
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