Neil Kinnock
Tom Sankey: This is Tom Sankey with the British Left Oral History Project. It is just after three on the 30th of June and could you say your name for the recording?
Neil Kinnock: Yeah, my name is Neil Kinnock, I used to be leader of the Labour Party a long time ago.
Sankey: [laughs] Not too long ago.
Kinnock: It is a hell of a long time.
Sankey: Okay, so first of all, when did you very first hear about Militant? As an organisation
Kinnock: Oh, when I was in university, really. They called themselves something different. Workers Socialist League or… I can't remember the exact formula they used. But they were the usual Trotskyite entrists and they had a guy who was leading them called Tony Cliff. Him I know about largely because in the university, I was chairman of the socialist society in my second year and then my wife came to the university and I met her, poor girl, on her first day and six months later, she was secretary of the socialist society. And we built a very big membership, about 800 in the university of 3,200 and the graduates, which is pretty good.
Kinnock: Among them was a guy called Tony Gard, who was middle class kid, a very, he was actually quite a nice kid, but strange in some ways. Obsessively political. And fancied himself as a follower of Leon Trotsky and naturally was associated with the various Trotskyite bits and pieces, including Cliff’s outfit. And he would, and this gave me an early rehearsal in dealing with them, because he'd come to meetings of the socialist society if we had a speaker and they ranged from Barbara Castle and Jim Griffiths to Michael Foote, Ian Mercado, and Harold Wilson. In fact, I chaired Harold Wilson's first public meeting the day after he was elected leader of the Labour Party in February 1963. Anyway, Gard would try to ask awkward questions but was no trouble in meetings. In the meetings where we didn't have speakers and we're discussing policy and campaigning, he was a bloody nuisance. Because he's one of those guys who thought the best way to slow down and distract a meeting was to refer to the standing orders perpetually. You may come across them, they still exist, and he was just a pain in various parts of the anatomy. And I realised eventually that this wasn't just because of his constitutional obsessions, but because it was a deliberate tactic to reduce attendance in the hope of getting proportionately larger support. You only have had one or two people supporting him, partly because he was quite a well-established Communist Party society, run by a guy called John Collins, who then, in the following fifty years, was a leading labour councillor in Preston. Lovely guy, beautiful guy.
Kinnock: Anyway, so the Trots couldn't really make up their mind, which, which group they wanted to infiltrate. And Gard decided it was the Labour Party because that was Cliff's line. And he was a South African Communist originally, an anti-Apartheid campaigner to his credit, who came to the UK, maybe, probably in the early 50s, I'm not sure when. So Gard's usefulness to me, really, was to give me an instance of the tactics they were using on the kind of people that made up their numbers.
Kinnock: And I first became really aware of them at that time, let's say around ‘62, ‘63.
Sankey: So outside of Gard, what were your kind of initial thoughts on the organisation? Did you see them as a potential ally, or just a nuisance?
Kinnock: No, no. A bit of an irrelevance to tell you the truth, because I was a member of the Labour Party, as we all were, in constituencies, in Cardiff mainly, my wife was a member of the Anglesey constituency Labour Party. I had been a member of the Ebbw Vale Labour Party, which is where it came from Tredegar. But I transferred to Cardiff Southeast, mainly in order to help boot out a corrupt Labour counsellor, which we eventually did. But most of the people who were members of the party, probably about two hundred out of the eight hundreds socialist society members we had, were members in Cardiff, which was useful, very good. And I never saw Tony Gard undertaking any kind of work or activity on behalf of the Labour Party.
Sankey: Right.
Kinnock: And this was, don't forget, we were coming up the ‘64 General Election, which was then followed by the ‘66 General Election. An in both elections, of course, our socialist society was very active. We were putting hundreds of canvassers on the street, in Cardiff, turning two marginals into pretty safe labour majorities, Jim Callahan and George Thomas and eventually in ‘66 winning Cardiff North from the Tories. Ted Rawins. So, we were very, very active, not only in Labour Party conventional campaigning, but also in anti-Apartheid campaign against racial discrimination, CND, anti-American demonstrations of various kinds against the engagement in Vietnam, for instance, from about ‘65 on. And campaigns against Polaris, naturally. And… So, you know, we will generally an active grouping, as well as Labour Party campaigning. No wonder I got such a useless degree. But I never saw Gard doing anything.. (Sankey: Right.) He was entirely engaged in what, he thought, actually, he was quite clandestine and so clumsy it was. But certainly, furtive fringe politics.
Sankey: Sure. So, when did you start to realise they were a threat to the party itself? Or becoming one?
Kinnock: Yeah I, probably in the early 70s. Because they were manifestly starting to get a foothold, not so much in whole city parties, but in wards. They managed to get a hold of one ward in Cardiff Southeast in, in Roath where there were a lot of university people there in. And they managed because they were a couple of older ones, few of the armchair types, actually. But he managed to get a hold of one ward as I recall, in the sort of later 60s. During my year, I was president of the Union, which was ‘65, ‘66. Well that was the only presence they had in Cardiff, but they were evident in Swansea, for instance, and I'd later discovered, that Swansea University and Newcastle Universities were the universities chosen by the leadership of what became Militant or was what was then becoming Militant, as they have favoured universities to encourage the young people that they detracted, if they were going to university. So, there were quite a few of them, not scores, but maybe dozens, in Swansea by the late 60s. And they were becoming evident in the Welsh Labour Party.
Kinnock: They included a young man called Andy Bevan, who later became the youth officer of the Labour Party at national level. And Andy was a clever fella, very bright, utterly misguided politically, but a nice guy with quite a lot of capability, who could, you know, attract people around his own age to become part of this clique. And he was in Swansea University and making himself known, speaking in Welshly (?) bloody conference and things like that. But, what I saw simply as local evidence of, if you like, an agitative policy, politics, agitprop, really. (Sankey: Sure.) Because they didn't exercise much influence. Then when I got to Parliament in 1970, within a few years, say ‘73, ‘74, maybe in the wake of the ‘72 miners strike, other members of Parliament on the left, Norman Atkinson from Tottenham, Stan Orme, Salford, Jack Mendelson, one of the Derbyshire seats. Started mentioning that they had young Trots, the phrase came into much broader use. But of course, because they were Tribune people, and in favour of free expression, quite rightly, they thought of them as a kind of doctrinaire challenge that had to be dealt with in one over to Bevanite democratic socialism, rather than any kind of menace. And these were people who were up the time were not in any kind of danger. Norman was late toppled by the London Labour Left, Livingstone Left, and replaced by, what's his name, in Tottenham. Oh, God. I'd think of his name, Joe. And who was amongst the four non-white Labour MP's elected in 87. Bernie Grant, Bernie Grant.
Kinnock: So, I mean, the London Labour Left, which included Trots, but wasn't Trotskyite, really, or Militant, they were never very strong in London. So, Norman eventually was overcome by the ultras, but not by Militant. And nobody else was particularly affected. Then they started becoming evident in the late 70s in Scotland, especially in Glasgow. And some of the, how can I put it, less active, elderly Labour Party MPs started getting worried by them. But I actually used to think, well, deservedly so. Whatever individual personal sympathy I had for these guys who are very complacent and not exactly terrific public servants, certainly by that time, they might had great records as trade unions and counsellors in earlier years, but by the time I knew them in the late 70s, not terribly impressive. I was to think, okay, if the kids are giving them a kick up the arse, well, they've asked for it. But that as a general phenomenon, it wasn't, I'm not talking about a large numbers then, just the odd Labour MP who over cup of tea in the tea room would say “a at bloody meeting that we had last Friday, these kids pestering and pushing and passing resolutions”. And it was evident, probably from the moon, that there was activity going on that conformed to the usual tactics.
Sankey: They didn't yet seem like a significant threat to the party?
Kinnock: No, in fact, until in the early 80s, they became the latest gang to take over Liverpool. (Sankey: Yes.) They were worrisome to the party organisation and to several MPs, particularly MPs on the Right of the party, but not only the Right.
Kinnock: And only one or two people, Reg Underhill, the national organiser, was chief amongst those who considered them to be a real menace. And obviously, you'll know produced this report, I think in... I don't think we had a Labour government then, I think we're into the 80s by the time Reg produced this report, which said, look, here's an organisation that is contradicting the Constitution of the Labour Party because it manifestly has got its own programme and philosophy, which was forbidden in what is very generous and liberal constitution. But initially, both Wilson had been and Callaghan was, reluctant to take action, because they had nasty memories, of course, of the efforts to purge Bevanites (Sankey: Of course.) in the 1950s, even though they'd been on quite different sides, Wilson as a Bevanite pretty much and Callaghan, who dropped his Bevanism in the 1940s. He started out as a very strong supporter of Nye and then faded away from it and became a more establishment orientated, in Labour Party terms. And they were reluctant to attract the accusation of witch hunting. which wasn't because they were cowards. It was simply because they'd been through an awful experience of division. And didn't want to stimulate it on their watch.
Kinnock: Years later, in a reception in Downing Street to mark, I don't know, the three hundredth anniversary of the Prime Ministership or something, it was in Thatcher’s time. Callaghan said the Wilson, the three of us talking. This young man, this must have been ‘85 I think, is doing what we should have done, Harold. And Wilson, who was then, because of advancing dementia in his dotage, said, we didn't think it was necessary to try, Jim, but you're right. And they sort of, held their glasses up and toasted me, which was very touching, very nice.
Sankey: That was around when you made your speech to the party.
Kinnock: Yeah, it was after the Blackpool speech, the Bournemouth speech. But, as I say, it was because of their historic experience. And their instinct of generosity, which is very Labour, in the constitution was, still is actually, about as loose as you can get. I tightened it up in order to ensure that when evidence was found and people were quote-quote prosecuted, there was a guarantee that the party abided by the rules of natural justice. So, everything had to be evidence based and so on, which it was, even under the inadequate constitution that I inherited. [cough] But it was crucially important because of the kind of party in the Labour Party is to ensure that when we did propose to chuck people out because of their activities, it was because of their unconstitutional action and commitment, not because of what they were thinking.
Sankey: Sure. So, the Militant Editorial Board was expelled in 1982.
Kinncok: ‘82, that’s right, when Michael was leader.
Sankey: Did you ever come across any of those (Kinnock: Oh, yeah.) individuals involved?
Kinnock: I mean, I used to, for my stupid sins, used to go to the Labour Party Young Socialists annual camp, which was held, as I recall, in Gloucestershire, at the invitation of Andy Bevan and the nice guy that was on the National Executive Committee, very articulate guy from Lancashire, I can't remember his name. He had all the kit to really be an effective Labour politician or a strong trade union representative.
Kinnock: But instead of that, he got caught up with the Trots, and as far as I know he's still a Trot. I mean, great shame, I can't remember his name. But anyway, they prevailed upon me twice [coughs] to, to go to the LPYS camp. And I met Peter Taffe who was, you know, an intriguing character, very, very lucid, very fluent, and talking complete nonsense.
Sankey: [laughs]
Kinnock: And… I mean, right through those years from maybe the earlyish 70s, during or after the ‘72 miners’ strike in I was very active. In fact, it was my engagement in putting the miners’ case and campaigning with them up and down the country that eventually persuaded me that I should stay in Parliament because I was, I was… I wasn't enjoying it, much so I didn't feel fulfilled. I thought it was more useful in my previous job, teaching labour economics and industrial relations to trade unionists. And Glenys and I were, we had two kids by then, very happily married. We were separate for four days a week, which was intolerable. So, I wondered if I should remain as a member of Parliament, but the ‘72 miners’ strike said, yep, you should Kinnock because you can do the business. So, I stayed. And from there on in, I developed what I called the bus queue test. I would say the people who were getting on my bloody nerves. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Right, for the sake of argument, I agree with you. I agree with you. As an active Labour Party member, the individual policies that you assert, I can’t, I can't disagree with. Now, you go and find a bus queue and get them to believe you, and I'll start to listen. I never had any takers on the bus queue test, but I, I was, I used that about six weeks ago in an argument about something. Don't try and persuade me, I'm too bloody old. Go and find a bus queue to persuade. And I think it's a good argument.
Sankey: Yeah, no, I agree. So, moving forward a bit, so as you said, Liverpool was one of the places where Militant (Kinnock: Yeah, yeah.) had its strongest hold. And amongst that, the most prominent member was Derek Hatton. (Kinnock: Yeah, yeah.) Could you say when you when you first met him, what were your thoughts at that time?
Kinnock: I first met him in… in early ‘84. it would have been February-March, and they were threatening to set an illegal rate or an illegal budget. And no, it wasn't March, it might have been April. April, yes. (Sankey: The start of April.) Anyway they, they wanted us to go to Liverpool, the Shadow Cabinet, myself, and Jack Cunningham, who was the Local Government Shadow Cabinet Minister, and one or two others. So, I said, no, no, if we're going to see you, you come to us. So they came down to London and we sat in the shadow cabinet room in there as the Commons and myself and Jack, Stam Orme, who was the Shadow Energy Spokesman, but interested and engaged. Who else? Maybe just the three of us. Because Roy Hat- no, Roy Hattersley, the Deputy Leader was there. And Brian Davis, the secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Charles Clark from my office, obviously. Anyway, on Sue Nye taking absolutely faithful shorthand minutes, I mean, she was utterly brilliant I tell her little story about that afterwards. Anyway, so we have this meeting. And Hatton and what's his name? Tony...
Sankey: Cliff?
Kinnock: No, no, he was a firefighter, Tony… He was, he was Hatton’s big mate, he died a couple of years ago. Anyway, and a few of the others, including the guy who was not in Militant, but certainly in the ultraleft, who was the chair of finance in Liverpool. (Sankey: Okay) And he agreed with him, though he wasn't in Militant. (Sankey: Right.) But when I spoke a couple of months later to Derek Worlock, who was the Catholic Archbishop, to speak to him, and David Shepherd, because they was deeply engaged in the community. very worried about Militant, not politically, but because of the effect that they were having on Liverpool, which was their diocese, obviously. And Worlock’s very, well they both were, Shepherd’s the England cricketer, and Worlock, both, you know, significant thinking, gutsy guys. And I got along very well with both of them. Anyway, I’m talking to Worlock and the name of the chairman finance came up, I can't remember his name. You'll be able to find that easily. And I said, he's a strange character. I said, because even when he knows that I know that he's lying, he is utterly convincing to himself and most of the people sitting around him. And it's complete… I said, “he's very, very…”, and Worlock, SJ, said “Jesuitical”, and I said, “that's the word I was looking for”, but I was much too polite to say it.?
Kinnock: But so, they, the main line was if the working class was given the leadership of Arthur Scargill and you as the leader of the Labour Party we could throw this government out. And they were, I mean, dead serious, dead serious. And I said, well, I'm no more going to lead a mass demonstration of the kind that you suggest, then I'm going to ride down. I'm trying to remember the main street in Liverpool… Lime Street. Then I'm likely to ride down Lime Street on the back of a hippopotamus singing God see the Navy.
Sankey: [laughs]
Kinnock: And anyway, they thought I was being patronising and insulting so they walked out, thank God. Anyway, we had, I think, one more meeting with them after that, which was equally fruitless. Because I wasn't giving them lectures on legality. I was saying to them, listen, listen, listen, you might get some satisfaction out of this gesture. It'll deliver Liverpool into the hands of bureaucratic commissioners. whose main duty is to the Treasury and not to the people of Liverpool. Now, as long as you understand that that's what you're doing and you still do it, well there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But you would be betraying the working class, not serving the working class. And I spelled all that, though, in terms. [coughs] The minutes are probably in the archiving Churchill College..
Kinnock: Anyway, um…That was the relationship, and Jack tried to keep in touch with them, but it was fruitless, really, and just a waste of time and energy. And so, by the conference of ‘84, I wanted to denounce them. very directly, but by then, of course, we were right in the middle of the miners’ strike.
Sankey: Yep.
Kinnock: And it would have been stupid for me to have tried to arouse the movement against the Militant Tendency and the heroics of Liverpool Council at the time when the mind of the movement was solely focussed on the miners’ strike, the conduct of the strike, the issues of civil rights, the arguments of bad coal, hatred of Thatcher, totally justifiable, policing methods, all kinds. The last thing on anybody's mind was Militant...
Sankey: Secondary issue.
Kinnock: So, yes. So I had to wait a whole year. During which time, of course, I realised, as I hadn't properly before, the inadequacy of the Labour Party Constitution, and the way in which we were going to have to be more than fastidious in the collection and use of evidence, in the hearing individually of anybody we brought a case against, and the fact that it was going to take months it actually took even longer than I assumed. It dragged out over about eight months, it's awful. Took hundreds and hundreds of hours of my time. Anyway, and eventually we checked out, I think it was twenty-one and didn't check out one guy who was obviously going along for the ride and hadn't done anything wrong. And a young woman who was guilty as hell, but actually, I'm not kidding you, wore bobby socks to the hearing in the NEC, looked about fourteen, though she was in her twenties. And Sam McCluskey and Alex Kitson, lovely guys on the NEC and great allies of man usually, even to the point of, when their union mandates were against my view, Alex would go to the toilet and Sam would go for a smoke to ensure they weren't there and they would then win by one vote. Anyway, they were great guys. But they said, “Oh, listen, you can’t chuck this kid out. She's innocent, probably of the charges, but certainly innocent”, and I said, “You two silly old buggers, you’re a pair of paedophiles.”
Sankey: [laughs]
Kinnock: I said, “No, come on, you've got this kid, because she's blonde and pretty and wearing bobby socks, you think it's impossible. I'll tell you what, she probably is the one carrying the bloody knife”. Anyway, they were, no way I could change them. So, so they, I said, okay, we won't press against her. We'll decide she's not guilty, which is what we did. But the others, they were the only two we let off. The others we chucked out of the party.
Sankey: So, what do you think, like, at his core, drove the members of Militant? Do you think it was genuine Trotskyite ideology? Do you think it was a wish to achieve power? Do you think it was just to make a point?
Kinnock: Came in two sizes, really. Those who were in the inner circle: Tony Cliff, Peter Taffe, the people around them, not even really Hatton, though he was a useful figurehead for them, because he's a wide boy. I mean, he's a gang leader and it wouldn't matter what the latest gang to take over Liverpool was. He would have been the head of it. (Sankey: Sure.) Yeah, and if it had had to be Catholic, he' would have been a Catholic and if it had to be Prot, he would have been a Prot. As it happens, it was the ultraleft's turn, as it were, so there he was. But so there were the ideological Trotskyites, who really did believe Lev Bronstein had upheld the true socialist way, faithful to Lemin's purposes, which had been betrayed by Stalin. And they were committed in almost a religious way. I mean, the scale of their doctrinaire commitment became all the spiritual. (Sankey: Sure.) And, you know, that can happen with politics, doesn’t happen to many people, thank God. Hitler managed to convince millions, of course, about his form of politics, and it embraced all the characteristics of a form of religion, with its own saints and sinners, doxology, and all the rest of it.
Kinnock: No, I mean, the Trots weren't like that. But nevertheless, those who were true believers were committed to the doctrine of permanent revolution. They inserted the adjective peaceful revolution, conducted by action and advocacy in order to arouse and mobilise the proletariat. I mean, that's what they believed. Okay. Outside that, there were a lot of quite lonely youngsters, looking for a cause and a kind of family. In that respect, the Trots had the same appeal as, as the Moonies of saying we respect you’re thinking and we share your demand for change. Come with us and you can be part of the change. And we've discovered the best way to do it is to use the established working-class party. So, this is how you go about infiltrating, which, of course, must have had a certain intriguing attraction of its own, and the fact that you didn't just belong to the Labour Party, but you were part of a network of associations that was having certainly furtive meetings and organising simultaneous resolutions, votes in regional conferences, adoption of affiliations and resolutions by constituency Labour Parties. And assisted by resort to the politics of boredom and antagonism, which the trots knew would reduce people's intonation to turn up at meetings. I mean, normal people who wanted to see their families go to the cinema, work shifts, and wanted their politics to be positive. (Sankey: Sure.) Not particularly right wing, not particularly left wing, but useful. And after two or three doses of Trot disruption, dislay, delay, meetings running well up to ten o'clock. Bugger that, I'm not going there, Life's too short. So, if you could reduce a meeting from forty to twenty, you only then needed eleven votes. And even smaller than that in ward meetings. So, I can imagine, I can understand even how youngsters who wanted to secure change out of a genuine desire to make their neighboured society community better, but also because there had certain resentments against older people, not necessarily parents or the older generation in general, but seventy-year-old counsellors who they found it easy to represent as reactionary and burnt out cases and all the rest of it.
Kinnock: So that was the second grouping, not of true believers, but of young people especially, with a particular compiled set of attitudes was the product of their time and their generation. And of course, by the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, it was pretty easy for young people to be pissed off. (Sankey: Yes.) Rising unemployment. Neglect of creative education. Now, we're not talking about youngsters who wanted to appear in the school drama or play in the school team.
Kinnock: We're talking about the youngsters who had a pretty soured view of life and what it held for them. So even the smart ones who went to university were fairly open to recruitment by people who told them that none of their complaints were their fault. They were the fault of the system. The system had to be changed, overthrown. The only party that could attract the breadth of support likely to do that was the Labour Party, so they had to infiltrate the Labour Party, and that was the top, bottom, and sides. So that was the two groupings. And of course, the doctrinaire people, very fluent, persuasive, certainly to young people who are fairly open-minded and have easily persuaded. They really did take full advantage of their experience and their command of the doctrine to convey to the kids that they were the genuine article and were providing reliable and were the leadership to secure a change in society.
Sankey: Sure. Brilliant. So moving, moving afterwards, did you keep much track of what became of the Militant leadership and the membership?
Kinnock: No, I just liked to be rid of them. I said to Tony Blair, in the wake of the, it might have been before the ‘97 election, he’d been leading for a couple of years. And I said, “you are one lucky bastard”, and he said, “I know that, but why are you saying this particularly now?” I said I just heard that Arthur Scargill has left the Labour Party and he is forming something called the Socialist Party. God, I would have given anything to get him out, but he never actually broke Labour Party rules. It was a pain in the arse. And as I told him, he’s the only union leader to begin a strike with a small house and a big union and then end the dispute with a big house and a small union. Anyway, and anyway, Tony laughed, though it was very funny.
Kinnock: But they just... They don't take much beating, and when they are beaten, they take refuge in their own righteousness. And they withdraw, because really, they've only got the one tactic, which is entrism. They could never, they know they could never build any significant support by themselves. Not like the French Trots, whose support had never been great, but they could rely on a million votes, you know? Or they used to be able to. Lionel Jospin, who became Prime Minister of France, a good friend of mine, when he was secretary general of the French Socialist Party and [unintelligible]. And he joined the Trotskyites when he was a “para” serving in Algeria. He and a lot of his mates were extremely brassed off young French guys doing their national service in the most unpleasant circumstances, serving a cause that they didn't believe in. Okay, what can we do to register our disgust? Oh, we can become Trotskyites. (Sankey: Sure.) So I mean they, Lionel joined the Trots.
Kinnock: Anyway, here, different set of conditions. And they knew they would never be able to win a council seat, really, standing as Revolutionary Socialists or Workers’ Social Front or whatever, they were going to call it. So infiltration was the only tactic. Once they were discovered, and I'd set up an administration, the National Constitutional Committee, that could deal with them, utterly fairly, on the basis of evidence, give them a hearing, decide whether they'd breached the Constitution or, and I don't think we ever had one legal challenge against the decision of the National Constitutional Committee. And the only contribution I made, apart from drawing up the provisions in the Book of Rules that brought them into existence was I hand-picked the membership.
Kinnock: And they were all second-ranked national union officials, or well-known respected Labour councillors.
Sankey: Sure. So, kind of, moving towards other groups at the period. So, the Communist part of Great Britain in the 1980s was still sort of limping along at the time. Were you much aware of their activities?
Kinnock: Yes, but I always have been you see because the leadership of the Southwest miners, with which I was very closely associated, as you'd expect, not just when I became a member of Parliament, for years before it, because of demonstrations, organisations, as I said, anti-Apartheid, CND, trade union, anti-closures, demonstrations, all the rest of it. And that leadership, Dai Francis the secretary, his successor as secretary, who name I will remember in a moment, a couple of members of the executive, great pals of mine, I mean, we were good buddies and they were great guys. And they got elected by a membership who would never vote for them if they ran for the council. But they got elected because they were hardworking, absolutely honest, straight down the line, and on the workers’ side. And they were model workers, really. And… And they were good guys, good sense humour, knew all the songs, all the rest of it. And Glenys got on with them really well and they were always really nice with her.
Kinnock: Anyway, so I was I were always well aware of the CPGB. I never thought they were in any sense effective. My mother and father, my father's an ex-collier, and then a blast furnaceman. My mother was a socialist, a kind of Christian socialist who never went to church. They had no time for the communists, politically. But they always respected the individuals. despite the fact that they were Communists. (Sankey: Sure.) So that was I was brought up knowing about them, really. And, of course, in my parents' generation, even when it became, I guess it became known that Stalin was a mass murderer, he was still the Stalin who had beaten Hitler. (Yes: Sure.) And in South Wales, as in parts of the middle class, because only the Communists had really stood up against Franco from 1936. There were young people like Dennis Healey who had joined the Communist Party, and his generation in Oxbridge. I mean, they left at the time of the Malenkov, the Molotov pact with the Nazis. Michael Bill, the youngest of my father's brothers, the boys paid for him to go to training college. He was a member of the CP in the 30s, resigned over the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and joined the army on the day that he graduated. And he was typical of the generation. So you know, there was respect for the Communist Party in a sense, partly because of the way they were first out against the fascists, because of their able and honestly leadership of the miners and… So, you know, I knew about them from the time I was a kid.
Sankey: But you never felt they represented an electoral threat from the left?
Kinnock: No, no, no, no, no. Because the thing is, they were much more profound than the Trots. And the fact that working guys who'd left at thirteen really had got their heads around the surplus value theory. And basic Marxist ideas, I mean, I picked up those, the understanding of that through reading Jack London, not through reading Marx or Lenin. And the manifesto, the communist manifesto, I regard it as a historic document of its time, when everybody else in Europe was revolting, including Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. I mean, okay. But it never had any appeal because it didn't satisfy the bus stop test..
Sankey: Sure. Okay. So, where are we in my questions? Oh, yeah, do you recog-
Kinnock: Then, of course, was there were some of the fifty-seven varieties, like in the international Marxists, the IMG, which were a bunch of posh kids, basically. SWP also quite a lot of posh kids. They actually invented the term, I think it must have Paul Foot, of the “Welsh Windbag” and was then picked up by the Sun. And I think it was because I went down to Sussex University. I never forget it. to debate against Paul, who I liked and he like me. We got, we had Michael in common, of course. And Paul was a charming guy, really a nice guy with a marvellous sense of humour. But he left the Labour Party and his, I mean his old man, who was a field marshal, for Christ's sake, and the governor of Cyprus. Anyway, there you go, and then a member of the House of Lords. And he'd gone to Shrewsbury Public School. And so I kind of, I felt sorry because of the disadvantages of his upbringing, you know what I mean?
Sankey: [laughs]
Kinnock: Anyway, and I had an argument with him once, which sort of ended by me saying, if you were bloody serious, you'd go to Merford Titville, where there's going to be a by-election for the local council, and you'd be running. And if you run, as a Socialist Worker, you'd get bloody wiped out. Next time, if you run as a Neighbour Party member, with your capability, you'd got elected and you'd be doing something for the working class instead of chattering. Anyway, he didn't like that very much. Anyway, but he, I mean, he, threw a few barbs back at me. But I went to Sussex University to debate against him. And as it happened, he spoke first, fluent, funny, charming, impressive, dah-de-dah-de-dah. By this time, I was a young MP, it would have been about maybe ‘73, something like that. And, you know, I was no fool and I'd spent three years teaching trade unionists or learning a hell of a lot more from them than they I ever taught them. But it meant that I could hold my own in just about any conditions, anyway. So, my opening lines were. I'm very, very grateful to Mr. Foot to comrade Foot, indeed, I'm proud to call him that, because we share so many opinions and values. But I'm particularly grateful to him, though, because I do comprehend what the letters SWP mean. and they mean Social Wankers’ Party.
Sankey: [laughs]
Kinnock: Brought the roof down right? But I don't think I was ever forgiven. Maybe not by Paul, but by Trots who were, Socialist Workers who were there. Which in a sense is strange because a boat for five years later in ‘78, Peter Hain was then president of the Young Liberals approached me and said, he was working with a guy whose named I will remember in the moment, from Socialist Workers’ Party and they were going to try and form an organisation called the Anti-Nazi League and was I going to join with them. I said, yeah, of course, straightway.
Kinnock: So I did. And I mean, the great thing was, not just the arguments we were putting, and the meetings we did all over the country. Two things: first of all, the artist who did all the work for the SWP, did the work for the Anti-Nazi League and he was bloody brilliant, because we decided the only way we were going to hit the National Front is to tell people they are Nazis. (Sankey: Yes.) And we used gold scuttle helmets, pictures of Auschwitz, jack boots, the bloody lot. Chucked everything at them, which I think is the right way to do it. And then a few months later out of it came Rock Against Racism, out of which came Teachers Against Racism, School Kids Against Racism, Cooks Against Racism, I mean, Architects Against Racism, and the rock concerts, which attracted the top groups, had scores of thousands, they looked like Glastonbury.
Sankey: I've seen the videos.
Kinnock: Yeah, Anyway, we finished the bastards off. And I think Colin, what's the name the Nazi? I think he did something ridiculously wrong and went to jail, Colin Jordan, for a year or so, and anyway, we've smashed them. [coughs] Because what had got Peter worried and I was worried too, and the SWP was they'd started winning wards in by-elections, in East London. And I think they'd won seven or eight, it was a bit like Reform at the moment. (Sankey: Yes.) Find the grievance, nourish the grievance, find somebody to blame, falsify history, and then offer simplistic responses to complex questions.
Sankey: Possibly the same as your sort of interpretation of the militant membership?
Kinnock: In that way, yes, yes, yes. Could people… Were dragging the anchor, you know? Didn't know where they were, what to believe, but knew that they were resentful for some reason or other. They wanted to be rebels, but they didn't have a cause. Along comes a cause. And, you know, the parallels between Militant and let's say, Reform, or the National Front, they’re not exactly by any means, but psychologically, there are parallels.
Sankey: So sort of a similar train, Michael Crick’s spoke about Militant. He did a revision in 2016, I think in order to compare Militant with Corbynism. (Kinnock: Corbyn, yes.) What are your thoughts on that?
Kinnock: Well again, two sizes. I mean, Corbyn in a funny way, though it didn't occur to most people at the time, was populist leftist. What do you want to hear, I'll tell you, what you want to hear. I mean, that was it, basically. Individually, you could… you hardly quarrel with many of the policies, individually. Put them together, and you knew that British people were never going to vote for them, and it didn't satisfy the bus stop test. But that was, and that was apart from the individual inadequacies, of Corbyn, which are many. And there was only a series of lucky or unlucky strokes that produced him as leader in a particular time setting, and with a set of rules, drawn up for entirely different purposes by a very innocent Ed Miliband. Anyway, Now, you ask about comparisons between Militant and the Corbyn phenomenon. Two sizes: the former Millies, former Trots, who had gone older, but no wiser, were still around. Some of them had even stayed dormantly, indolently, really, in the Labour Party, some had gone elsewhere. Along comes Corbyn with his radical programme, natural magnet. Tony Benn has risen from the grave.
Kinnock: Because without having any of Benn's talents or qualities, Corbyn was enraptured by Benn, directly influenced by Benn in his early 20s, and unlike most people who grow up, had not found it necessary to change his mind on anything. So, without Benn's flexibility and intellectual capacity, Corbyn was stuck in the mid-1970s, really. Now, former Trots and people of that inclination, who've got older but no wiser, buttoned on to Momentum, which began from much more innocent progressive purposes. And they were able because of their age and experience, and their fluency, to persuade lots of youngsters were motivated entirely by the right purposes, that it was going to be much easier than the kids thought, with lines like, look around you, we are the majority. And of course, in a packed hall or a big demonstration, you are. But not everybody's turned up to the demo, you know? I mean, George Bernard Shaw said that when at the founding of the Fabian Society, we determined not to confuse a personal sentiment with a mass opinion. And a fundamental.
Sankey: Good quote.
Kinnock: Yeah, and the people of whom I'm speaking never conveyed that reality to the kids. Now, all that worried me at the time was, since I knew it would pass. I mean, it would inflict dreadful harm on the Labour Party, but it would pass because it was unsustainable. And there would be no succession because the party generally would learn a lesson and people would get organised against it. That's the biology of politics if you like. So, I wasn't worried about the triumphing ever. All I was bothered with was the idea that the kids, having given it a try, seen that it was fruitless, were desperately disappointed and dropped out entirely as a consequence. Went off and joined the Royal Society Protection of Birds or whatever, or the Greens. And of course, some of them did. More sort of just drifted out. Some to the general credits stayed, a few retaining their youthful zeal for utter and dramatic change. Most realising politics is a slog and progressive politics is even more than a bloody slog.
Kinnock: And sticking with things, I saw some of them yesterday from you if I did a, a meeting to raise funds in Islington North Constituency Labour Party. And there were a couple there and three or four, actually, in their early 30s now. who had been enthusiastic supporters of Corbyn as their MP who were part, now, of the mainstream, obviously with doubts and serious concerns about the current state of affairs, but anyway, they wouldn't be sensible people if they didn't. So… So, that's the two sizes: devotees who are opportunistic (Sankey: Yeah.) and the rest who were enthusiastic and quite innocent and as I say, my concern was that they would drop out in so many of them have. It’s a bloody shame, but there we are.
Sankey: Well, I think that's all the questions I had. (Kinnock: OK.) Thank you so much, Neil.
Kinnock: It one thing, (Sankey: Of course.) yeah, I should say. The offer of, the offer that the Labour Party suggests to the ultraleft, not necessarily Trots, but including Trots, is the prospect of power in the Labour Party being a necessary precursor or having a higher priority than power for the Labour Party. And it's because they believe, and it's a very convenient belief that it doesn't involve a lot of hard work, but they believe that the day will come when the voting majority are so repelled by the dishonesty, failure, exploitation of Toryism that they will look for a party that is radical and committed to very substantial, rooted change. With a leader that directly reflects that, and therefore, it's worth working for that kind of Labour Party, because that, our day will come when the new consciousness arises. Now, of course, I'm not describing it fairly, really, because they wouldn't put it like that. But ultimately, if you examine them, that's what they believe, certainly that's what they practice. And it's total bloody nonsense, of course. But you can see the attractiveness of it if you do politics from your armchair or behind the desk. And you really do have ideals that are not afflicted by realism. [unintelligible] said that the task of the Labour Party, this is in the wake of the 1931 cataclysm. The task of the Labour Party is the demonstrate to the public that it's realism is not torpor, and its idealism is not madness. And it's a mix of idealism, which is the crucial energy-giving fuel, and realism, which gives you the right to seek votes and to be elected. That's necessary in getting the mixture is never going to be easy. (Sankey: No.) Never going to be easy. But, I mean, if you truck the idealists and then you counsel a stern realism, they get disillusion, disappointed. And if you only offer realism, people with ideals find it hard to engage. So we get the mixture right. Yeah, it’s bloody difficult, but vital, essential. That's, you know, that's what makes politics interesting, tough, and often bloody boring.
Sankey: [laughs] Well, thank you so much, Neil.
Kinnock: You're welcome.