Ben Bradnack
Tom Sankey: This is Tom Sankey with the British Left oral history project. It is 3:22 on the 8th of July, 2025. Can you please say your name for the recording?
Ben Bradnack: Ben Bradnack, Thomas Benjamin Bradnack.
Sankey: Brilliant. So, to start off, when was your first introduction to politics in adolescence?
Bradnack: As far as you want to go back, probably my first conscious memory must have been in 1945 general election, (Sankey: Sure.), when I was 8, and my mother took me to the polling station in Worcester, which was where I lived then.
Sankey: What can you tell me about it? Do you remember anything other than just the fact there was an election?
Bradnack: Probably not very much. I remember my mother talking a bit about it including, I think, she told me that she was actually voting what was then called Liberal Party, I think. Otherwise it, probably I'm as likely to be fictionalising as anything so probably, less about it.
Sankey: Sure. So when do you first say you were interested in politics?
Bradnack: At secondary school, probably significantly I read… I did history as a sort of main subject inevitably that was going to be therefor something which involves me in quite a lot of remember what history was happening or was happening at the time, that I was dealing with. So yes, I think by that stage I probably got a rudimentary understanding of who voted for what and what they stood for.
Sankey: So what, what were your position sort of in, sort of, at a young age, if you could have said you had one?
Bradnack: I think it's probably varied quite a lot I can remember at one stage, somebody thinking I was a fascist.
Sankey: Oh really?
Bradnack: But that was a long time ago and, and I'm not sure that I quite understood what it meant but it did seem at the time be faintly insulting and therefore something that I particularly wanted to... This is probably going to be fairly weak. [referring to a cup of tea]
Sankey: No worries. So when do you start getting involved in politics?
Bradnack: Ah, right. That's a different issue. I was, I, actually not that different, even while I was at university I did join the Labour Club at Oxford and I… Sorry I given you white [referring to the tea] (Sankey: No, no, thank you very much.) And I never seriously thought about joining any other party. And I guess by the time I was at Oxford, I was already committed to, by and large, a sort of Labour Party view of the world. I can also remember prior to that, it was in the days of National Service, and I think I probably first articulated to somebody I didn’t know a sort of political philosophy about representing the underdog, I think, and that was probably when I was in the army.
Sankey: Was there any kind of socialist element to your beliefs at the time?
Bradnack: Oh, yes, I think almost certainly there were versions of socialism, varied quite a lot over time. In, when 1957, ‘58 we were talking, it was in the middle of a long period of Conservative government, so it was relatively easy and straightforward to believe in whatever it was the Labour Party stood for.
Sankey: Yes, yeah. So how did this compare with your parents beliefs. You said your mum probably voted liberal?
Bradnack: Yes. We didn't talk politics very much, quite curious actually, that we never did talk about politics. My mother died when I was eight, and in fact my father married again. Interesting symbolic moment when they stopped taking the Times and started taking the Telegraph, which was my step-mother’s influence.
Sankey: Okay, so what did you do for work in eighties and nineties?
Bradnack: I was a teacher.
Sankey: You're a teacher.
Bradnack: Yeah. I swapped slightly, a couple of times. I started off as a historian, I then became a drama teacher and I then came to Cambridge and took on a broad responsibility for a whole range of subjects as general education, general studies.
Sankey: Sure. Was there much, do you notice much politics in your work, were people particularly…
Bradnack: As much as I chose to make it, really I think. In my previous existence, when I taught, probably not that much. When I came to Cambridge, it changed. And that was partly a matter of accident, (Sankey: Sure.) that, I had previously seen myself as a practitioner, and I clearly had a politics but it wasn't something that I spent a long time thinking about. Once I was, had landed in Cambridge, I came with a fairly specific commitment to the Labour Party, because at that time, after quite a long time, I'd actually been a member of the Labour Party, and I suppose… I'm trying to think when I first joined, it was probably 1969, I think. (Sankey: Sure.) But I, from 1980 onwards it was quite difficult to separate what I saw as my political responsibilities, separate from everything else I did
Sankey:Of course the 1980s was a time of major division within the Labour Party, how did you navigate that, view that?
Bradnack: Good question. Long pause.
Sankey: No worries.
Bradnack: I, I thought of myself from about 1976 as being from the left of the Labour Party but not Bennite, I was always mistrustful of Tony Benn. And, because I didn’t have a particular role, it didn’t matter significantly. Later, by the 1980s, quite a lot of more positions were “if you believe this then you believe that” sort of thing. Whereas I think, in the 70s, I probably didn't think that very much I simply felt that I knew which side I was on.
Sankey: Did you ever come in contact with the Militant group in this period, or was it more of a distance?
Bradnack: No, not really. I came across it a bit going to general committee meetings when there were usually one or two people there articulating a more obviously militant position, but by and large, no, I don’t think I was very conscious of it at all.
Sankey: Well, if you did have thoughts about them at the time, what were they, if you remember, were they, did you see them as a threat to the party, a nuisance, somewhere in the middle
Bradnack: I was quite interested, and I was trying to think when that interest materialised into a sort of rather specific position. It was probably after the 1980 election and I think I became, I was never an enthusiast for Militant a bit more hypercritical of the Left from 1981, ‘82, ’83. At which stage I recall, do you take sugar in this kind of tea? (Sankey: No.) At which stage I think I saw the left being a problem, a millstone in the way that I don't think I'd really understood it before. I did, it was something I didn’t sympathise with particularly or yes, but I think it was around about that time that I became much more conscious that it was tricky territory which would end up with having more enemies than friends.
Sankey: Ok, so moving slightly beyond the Labour Party, did you ever, were you very aware of, did you come in contact with groups that sat to the party’s left: Socialist Worker Party, Communist Party? Were they much in your orbit?
Bradnack: Not very much. I mean, I knew people who were more left than me and, you know, I was on perfectly good speaking terms, but I don't think I ever seriously thought that’s where I want to be, I don't think, no.
Sankey: But did you ever think, there was the chance of broader left, centre-left (Bradnack: Yes, yes.) conversation?
Bradnack: Yes I did think that. And inevitably, running through that, was the drumbeat of, of the miners, of the ongoing miners’ strike. And I think I became a good deal more exercised by the fine detail of, of the consequences that might be, from that stage which, I guess, from the early 70s, early 80s. I became, I think, aware of the extent to which if you're a proper leftist, then you might end up supporting all sorts of things which actually be quite tricky. And so, by and large, I sought to avoid that if I could, I think, yeah.
Sankey: So we talked about you were not a Bennite and you're a bit put off by the, sort of, Left. Were there any writers, politicians, people who you found particularly inspiring?
Bradnack: Yes, I guess. I think there, I think my, the woman who became my wife, was quite influential. I think, by and large, we tended to share a lot of issues, and I, I met her… I’m just trying to think when I met her, It must have been 1983, ’84, and we tended to be politically quite attuned I think, to the issues, in ways I might have been more woolly minded if I hadn’t, at that stage, married her.
Sankey: So how did you find the community within the Labour Party?
Bradnack: How did I find?
Sankey: How did you find the community within the Labour Party? Did you find it a place accepting a wide range of views you find it more, kind of, centrally dogmatic?
Bradnack: Where I've been, it's always been quite a broad church anyway. Whereas I started teaching Somerset, where you were lucky if you met another Labour Party member. Thereafter, when I went to Sevenoaks, I went to Southampton and I went to Cambridge. I became, It was much, I became aware of how easy it was actually to find people who were sympathetic, and I think that got easier as time went on.
Sankey: So how did your commitment to Labour affect the rest of your life? Did it take up much of your free time?
Bradnack: It depends, it depends what you mean by free time. At some level, it probably takes up, sometimes, quite a lot of my time, or indeed all of my time, and at the same time I’m not particularly conscious of thinking, “what does the Labour Party think?”. But its true that as I watch television or and pick up newspapers, I mostly read things which are broadly sympathetic to the Labour Party and will inevitable inflect my views in one way or another. But I wouldn't say it's very obvious that I am… I’m just trying to think, if I talked to my neighbours here, how do they know that I’m a member of the Labour Party? And they do, you have to be here a few months and you do discover. So in a sense, for a long time its become axiomatic that I’m a member of the Labour Party, and the fact that I was, I was a Labour councillor for eighteen years and leader of the Labour Group for three, four years, meant that it was, it was assumed that I was going to, broadly going to represent the Labour Party. That there's no reason why I would want to do anything else.
Sankey: Sure. So what was it that tipped the balance between you wanting to be a member of the Labour Party and wanting to stand for election?
Bradnack: Actually its perfectly straightforward really.
Bradnack: In 1991, the head of Long Road Sixth Form College, which is where I was teaching, was newly appointed, came from a tradition which was not one I was comfortable with. She’d come from sixth form colleges about which I knew a bit, and I began to detect that what I was interested in and wanted to do would be difficult for her and I think almost inevitably therefore, I simply decided, time to go and I left Long Road in 1991.
Sankey:Yep. So how did you find the becoming a councillor experience, was it an easy thing to fall into?
Bradnack: Well it was very easy for me in the sense that I was living in the far side of the river, in Petersfield, which is a solidly Labour seat. I knew the councillors already, some of them I still know, and it was easy, it was just a question of when would stand and first opportunity I got, I took it. I was easy, probably the least difficult of the decisions that I've taken in my life.
Sankey: Were there anything surprising about becoming councillor that you didn’t expect in the first place? Particular challenges you found whilst you were in the job?
Bradnack: Trying to think. There was probably a time when Labour lost control of the city council, and therefore actually the name of the game changed quite a lot, where I, I decided I was going to stay on, partly because actually at that stage, I was the obvious candidate as leader. And, so it wasn’t very obvious how much had changed, but, then, if I look back to 2010, which is which is when I stepped down from being leader to when I first joined, which must have been 1967, quite a lot had changed, I think, but I didn't really register it at simply warp and weft of time, as it were, I think.
Sankey: Yeah sure, because I was just about to ask, because of course the late 90s was a period of political transformation of the Labour Party at a national level, did you find that affected you in your job significantly?
Bradnack: It probably did effect my job in ways which I probably didn’t begin to register, simply because I was so deeply embedded in what it was to be a Labour councillor. And before that I, I’d assumed that at one stage I would become a Labour councillor and in 1991 it was an obvious thing to do for somebody who had just decided to give up teaching. I must have been 56, 57, 55.
Sankey:So did you notice much of a change in attitude for with other people involved in the Labour Party?
Bradnack: There probably was, but I probably wasn't that conscious of it, simply because there was a constant flow of people that I got to know and not many people that I…
Bradnack: No, that’s not quite right. There were quite a lot of, there were some people that I'd always hung on to, but curiously, my oldest friend, yes probably my oldest friend from my university, he never joined the Labour Party, and that wasn’t ever a problem, in the sense we knew what we agreed and disagreed about, and we didn’t disagree about very much, but he’d come from trajectory in which his life moved rather differently from mine. Whereas for me, it obvious that I was going to join the Labour Party, for Nick it wasn't obvious that he was going to join a party and indeed he didn't join a party ‘til he joined the Greens in his early seventies. So you know, mostly, a bit glib, but mostly it just seemed in the nature of things. Nothing very startling about it at all.
Sankey: So do you approve of the change, of Blair’s changes of the party?
Bradnack: Yes, by and large, I think I did. And it’s quite interesting going to occasional meetings of Labour history groups who still meet on occasions, and finding myself, mostly agreeing with people I agree with and thinking subsequently about why have I come to think that? But it was not at all obvious to me at the time that this was a problem, if indeed it was a problem. I think what I’m saying is that Labour Party is, actually… The Labour Party in Britain is such a broad collection of attitudes and values, not all of which are compatible. It's a mess, in some ways, which is why, by and large, I found it reasonably comfortable to be there, wherever. Curiously, there are people who I see regularly, who have left the Labour Party, and I have not joined them, because I'm not convinced that doing something different has effects. I don't, I'm not that confident that alternatives exist in ways which I would say “I’m going to stop being in the Labour Party and be in something else”. There have been the odd occasions, when I’ve thought “oh shit”, but that moment passes.
Sankey: Sure. So as a councillor, did you ever feel much of a threat from the left? (Bradnack: No.) No?
Bradnack: Not quite true, not quite true. There were a couple of occasions when people stood on particular issues where I could have been accused of being of the right. But, mostly I think I've avoided that, which is either luck or graft. It’s perfectly possible to be not quite all things to all men, but to be perfectly acceptable to most people in the Labour Party.
Bradnack: And I don't think I've ever really found myself stuck in the minority where I’m, found myself saying I'm not going to put up with that any longer. I don’t think that’s ever quite happened. It was mostly as if I went where I was comfortable and that turned out to be by and large where a lot of other people were comfortable so it wasn't, it wasn't too much of a problem.
Sankey: So, I'm just going to go over some of the sort of the key social changes of the 80s and 90s and see where, how you and your political position sort of, interact with them. So, of course, it was a period of where, of, of, of, third or even fourth wave feminism, where women were starting to get more of a role in society, did you notice that as more significant in the Labour Party than the rest of the country, less, did you notice it at all?
Bradnack: I… I, I was into my serious adulthood before I found myself having to make serious choices. I probably didn't think of myself as being serious implicated until 1991, ’92, the stage at which I was leaving, leaving teaching, that I thought the time had come, at which probably I’d fallen out with the Labour Party as… no not with the Labour Party. I’d fallen out with the, the head of the college, who’s politics I didn’t really approve of by comparison with her predecessor, who I have been arguably close to and so actually the switch was quite hard, and that an obvious was sort of caesura point, which I thought I need to do something different from this. That was probably the most significant career choice that I found myself making, and that was, by then I was already fifty-five. After fifty-five, you don’t make that many choices anyway! [laughs] I think, yeah, I think I found myself interested and quite embroiled in the debate around the mining, the miners’ strike and, but then so was everybody. I’m not sure if that was a particular test of my loyalty, except in the sense it was everybody's problem a bit. And, I think, like most people, I was pretty mistrustful of Scargill, but again like most people, I was pretty sympathetic to Kinnock, whose relationship with Scargill was not entirely easy.
Sankey: No. Okay, so, okay, we're just sort of winding down. Is there any decision you made, politically, in the eighties and nineties that you might have changed if you could have gone back to it? Or anything you particularly stand by to this day?
Bradnack: I don't have any stand out moment, I don't think I ever seriously regretted the positions that I took. And, for quite a lot of that period, I was anyway trying to act as leader of the Labour Group and trying to understand where everybody was coming from, so in a sense my own personal references became a second order. It became a sort of responsibility really to try and make sure that everybody was by and large corralled into the same position, partly because it was a time at which we’d already lost control of the, of the council, and one had to be quite careful to look after the relatively few councillors that we had between 2000 and, 1999 and 2004, 5. After that we clawed back fairly easily, and I never really lost that control but there were probably one or two moments in 2000, 2003, 4, 5, where I was having to work quite hard at a sort who was, who was seriously hostile, and who were simply fly-by-night.
Sankey: Brilliant, just to finish off, is there any, is there any last, last things you want to put on the record about your experiences in the period?
Bradnack: I think quite a lot of this territory, I’m trying to think if I’ve still got it, is dealt with by a book that was edited by two Labour leaders after my time. And they, by and large, probably did... Just trying to think where I’ve still got it.
Sankey: Well, no worries if not. (Bradnack: Sorry?) No worries if not.
Bradnack: No, no, I’m just interested, partly because I wanted to see whether what I've just been saying is all bollocks, or whether it does stand up to some measure of scrutiny, but I don’t think I’ve got it here, and one of my problems is I’m not terribly good at hanging on to stuff I should hang on to.
Sankey: Okay, I think we’ll end the recording there, thank you very much Ben.
Bradnack: Okay, that’s all right.