Neil Kinnock Coming Home

'Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock

'is on a personal journey to trace his family story in Wales.'

I'm looking forward with great anticipation because of the hints

that I've been given about stories of my family -

on both sides, I guess.

Even when your life has been churned over in biographies and so on,

you still retain a sense of curiosity

about bits that are missing.

So I'll really enjoy myself if we discover bits that are missing -

good, bad or indifferent.

'But can anything really prepare him

'for what he will discover on this journey, as Neil Kinnock

'is coming home?'

'Later on the programme, Neil wrestles with a shocking family truth...'

I'd like to take a magic pill

to get back and say,

"Great-grandmother, what the HELL were you thinking of?"

'..meets up with old friends...'

Amazing!

'..and uncovers a moving family secret.'

That I didn't know. I really didn't know that.

'Born in 1942, the son of a South Wales coal miner,

'Neil Kinnock rose to become Labour leader and so very nearly British Prime Minister.

'A man passionate in his beliefs, even when taking on militants in his party.'

A Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle round the city

handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.

'His political convictions have always been rooted in his Welsh family history.'

Why am I

the first Kinnock

in a thousand generations

to be able to get to university?

'Today, Neil Kinnock is heading to Tredegar,

'his home town.

'He has a special reason for making this journey.

'He lost both parents 40 years ago this year,

'and as an only child, he's now become aware

'that he's the last of the Kinnocks to come from South Wales.'

Recently, and very sadly, my last two surviving aunts...

..the last survivors of my parents' generation of relations,

died in March and in April.

That does mean something in terms of my relationship to the valley communities.

And in November and December this year,

there'll be the 40th anniversary of my parents' deaths,

within a couple of days of each other.

And so...that kind of...memory

and the very recent alteration...

..makes me want to take stock.

'The story begins with Neil's mother, Mary Howells,

'a district nurse from Aberdare with deep Welsh roots.

'In 1938, she married into the Kinnock family.

'Her husband was Gordon Kinnock, a coal miner from Tredegar.

'The Kinnock clan were originally from Scotland, but moved to Bristol,

'where Neil's grandfather, Archie Kinnock, was born.

'Later, Archie would move to Tredegar, South Wales.'

I used to go and stay with my grandpa, Archie,

in Vale Terrace in Tredegar,

so I got lots of stories from him.

'The manager of Archie's coal mine lived here in some splendour

'at Bedwellty House, now a heritage centre.

'Neil has come to meet with genealogist Mike Churchill-Jones,

'who has traced his family back to the 1690s.'

Your Kinnock family name is obviously Scottish.

You come from a long line of shoemakers in Perth in Scotland.

Your second great-grandfather

is shown as a shoe and boot maker, employing ten men.

'The Kinnocks would come south when Neil's great-grandfather, William,

'brought the family to Bristol.

'Here, he married Emily Hayman.

'Emily was Neil's great-grandmother,

'and later would have a huge role to play

'in the fate of the Kinnock family.

'Between them, Emily and William had a large family.'

William Gordon and Emily,

they had ten children, I believe.

The important one for us is your grandfather, Archibald James,

who was born 1882.

He came down...

He moved from Bristol to this part of the country. Any idea why?

Because he quarrelled hideously with his father

and, literally, ran away.

He was over 16 by that time.

Got down to Bristol docks and was looking for a ship.

And the only one under steam...

-LAUGHING:

-..was the ferry across the Bristol Channel into Cardiff.

He was hoping he'd eventually get to the United States or Canada or wherever.

He ended up in Cardiff

and they told him that "There's gold in them there hills!"

He got up to Tredegar and starting working in Ty Trist colliery.

'In fact, Mike Churchill-Jones suspects that this story Neil learnt from his grandfather

'is almost certainly not true.

'But that's something Neil will learn later on his journey.

'He will uncover not only the truth about Archie, his grandfather,

'but also two of Archie's brothers, Harold and Wilfred Kinnock -

'a story that will lead Neil to uncover a hidden family fortune.

'Finally, on his mother Mary's side, the family name was Howells.'

This side was much darker to me, the Howells side, than the Kinnock side,

simply because we never got round to talking about their background.

These were West Walian Howells.

-Yeah.

-That's going to be your next stop.

You'll find out a lot more about how they lived their life.

-This is absolutely fascinating.

-I'm glad you like it.

-Yeah.

'To discover the story of his Howells family, Neil travels to Kidwelly,

'where there's a surprise.

'For the first time, Neil is about to see

'the tinplate works, where generations of his family laboured.

'Today, the works is a museum.

'Researching the Howells family has been social historian Chris Delaney,

'who takes Neil to see a special place in his family story.'

This is the hot mills, where your great-grandfather worked,

where Thomas Howells worked as a furnace man.

The work that he did, to supply the hot bars to the rolling mills,

the rolling mills and the rest of the steam engines all survive.

Now, I worked 50 years ago in Ebbw Vale steelworks,

-in the hot mill, at one stage.

-Right.

-Rolling.

How does this differ from what I was doing?

This was making tinplate by hand.

Here, you had a mill crew, which your great-grandfather was part of.

They were the elite. They were the people who set the pace.

They needed to produce the tinplate from the bar

for the rest of this works to make money and for people to take home decent wages.

'The owner of the works was this man, Daniel Chivers.

'He founded the site in the 1870s.

'An enlightened employer, he built a model village for the workers,

'believing good working conditions were the key to productivity.'

What were living conditions like in that new town?

The new-built houses weren't thrown up, they were well constructed.

Chivers, the Chivers family, was a very paternalistic industrialist.

They helped with the chapels,

founded a number of institutions, so they would have built good quality housing of the time.

'So why did the Howells family leave for Aberdare in South Wales?'

The problem is the Americans.

In order to help their own industry, which was young and growing, they brought in tariffs.

Absolutely devastated the Welsh industry.

So the reason why I think of my family as coming from Aberdare

-is American protectionism.

-Yes.

You can blame the McKinley tariffs for your Aberdare connection.

'Next, Neil is travelling from west Wales

'back to Tredegar, where he will learn of a shocking revelation in his tree.

'Growing up, Neil's grandfather, Archie,

'with his father, Gordon, and mother, Mary,

'all instilled in Neil the importance of education.'

So far as my parents and grandparents are concerned,

education was the jewel.

It was the key. It was the avenue. It was the access.

It was the stairway.

'Growing up, Neil concluded

'that generations of the Kinnocks were denied a good education,

'something that became the bedrock of his political beliefs.'

Why am I

the first Kinnock

in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

I was acutely aware of the fact that my parents particularly,

but my family generally,

had been denied anything like those opportunities,

despite their manifest intelligence and talents.

'In fact, Neil is about to learn

'that one of his family did receive a privileged education.

'Back at Tredegar's old council chambers, he meets again with genealogist Mike Churchill-Jones.

'What Neil is to learn concerns the Kinnock side of his family.

'The story begins in Bristol,

'and the death of Neil's great-grandfather, William Kinnock, in 1892.

'His widow Emily was left with ten children to bring up,

'including Archie, Neil's grandfather,

'and his brothers, Harold and Wilfred.

'Emily made what must have been a heartbreaking decision,

'to abandon one of her sons, Wilfred, to an orphanage.'

Archie's brother, Wilfred,

at the age of two,

was put by his mother, Emily,

into a "waifs and strays" home.

That I didn't know. I really didn't know that.

That's...

deeply miserable.

Good God!

'Neil's grandfather, Archie,

'was aged nine when his brother, Wilfred, was taken to the orphanage.

'Archie would also have known what happened to his brother, Harold.

'Emily sent Harold away, too, but not to the orphanage.

'Remarkably, she sent HIM

'to one of England's oldest and most prestigious public schools.

'Founded in 1553 by Edward, son of Tudor King Henry VIII,

'King Edward's School in Surrey is still a thriving public school.

'This is a story Neil is about to learn for the very first time.'

We find that Harold Bruce Kinnock,

bearing in mind that your grandfather finds his way to the mines of Tredegar,

Wilfred is in a waifs and strays home, we find Harold

in one of the most exclusive private schools

-in England.

-Good lord!

He started boarding there in 1898 until around 1902.

So he was in Surrey, in a very exclusive boarding school.

One is in a waifs and strays home

-and the other one is in an exclusive public school?

-Indeed.

-How would you explain that?

-I've no idea. It's impossible to explain.

When you compare it with the fortunes of the rest of the family.

By then, Archie was having his quarrels with his father

and was getting ready to run away.

'But is this story really true?

'Did Neil's grandfather run away from home to escape his bullying father,

'William Kinnock?

'In fact, it appears William Kinnock had died

'many years before Archie made his trip to Wales.'

He's died in 1892, so it's nine years later that Archie finds his way to Tredegar.

So...

can we really say that it's because he fell out with his father?

That was the story in the family.

Looking at that, I would say that the crux of the problems that led Archie to Tredegar,

the fact that Wilfred finds himself in what is effectively an orphanage.

-Yes.

-It's something to do with favouritism by the mother.

-Yes.

-Her favourite son is Harold.

Yeah.

On the back of having such a good education,

he found himself as a civil servant.

Good lord! So he would have been a civil servant

-in the years before the First World War?

-Indeed.

Amazing.

But what this proves is that you weren't the first Kinnock

to have a good education behind you.

Well, going to THIS school

doesn't NATURALLY convey the fact that it's a good education.

'Of her ten children, it's hard to imagine

'why Emily chose such different paths for two of her sons,

'decisions that had far-reaching consequences

'for both Harold and Wilfred.

'But how much of a surprise has this been for Neil?'

I really didn't know that one of my grandfather's brothers

lived in an orphanage for many years.

And that the other one

went to a public school.

There are lots of extraordinary things about this...

segment of history, that are a revelation.

'These stories have challenged some of Neil's most cherished beliefs,

'and go to the heart of his political and family life.

'He would dearly love to be able to speak to his grandfather, Archie,

'and ask him why he didn't share these important stories with him.

'But Archie died when Neil was a teenager,

'and Neil lost his father, Gordon,

'and mother, Mary, whilst still in his 20s.

'His mother passed away within a few days of her husband.

'Neil believes she died of a broken heart.'

At the end of November this year

will be the 40th anniversary of my parents' deaths,

within a few days of each other.

Which, of course, was utterly shattering.

'Neil knows that as an only child,

'he is the last of the Kinnocks to come from Tredegar.

'Even his family home, the prefab house where he grew up, has been demolished.

'He's aware that his links with his beloved home town are ebbing away.

'But even 40 years on, in a strong community like Tredegar,

'Neil is never far from people who remember his parents fondly -

'including retired milkman Trevor Jones, known as Trevor the Milk.

'He has a surprise - a surviving photograph of Neil's family home.'

That's the prefabs. Amazing!

Our house, number one.

Morgans, number four here.

Davis, number three.

-Great days!

-I remember your mother visiting patients up there.

-Indeed.

-Cromwell Roberts lived over here.

-Cromwell Roberts! Ambulance driver!

-That's right.

-It's great to see you.

-Oh, yes.

'Neil is back on the trail of his grandfather Archie's story.

'For this, he must travel to Bristol,

'to the town where Archie grew up.

'In Bristol, Neil is here to learn of his grandfather Archie's parents,

'both Emily and William Kinnock.

'William Kinnock was a military man and later an accountant.

'Despite his outward respectability, in 1892, amazingly,

'he died here, in this workhouse in the Stapleton area of Bristol,

'a place reserved for the very poorest in society.

'The workhouse still stands today.

'It's always been Neil's belief his great-grandfather died of drink.

'But what has historian Peter Higginbotham managed to unearth?'

We've got a death certificate here

of your great-grandfather,

William Gordon Kinnock, 1892.

He died in the Bristol city workhouse, Stapleton.

Now, the cause of death

was ulcerated legs, weak heart, exhaustion.

Drink.

-You think that was the reason?

-It was booze. Yeah.

-The other thing we know about him, he wasn't penniless.

-Oh.

He had 130 quid to his name after he died.

-£30,000 in today's prices.

-Right.

You couldn't just come into a workhouse. There was a means test.

The best explanation is

that William wanted a bit of free medical treatment.

He almost certainly had the interview with the officer,

-but didn't really...

-Disclose.

-..come clean about what he had tucked away.

'So Neil's great-grandfather, William Kinnock,

'was prepared to live out his days in the workhouse,

'a place of last resort for the very poor, even though he had money

'and could have avoided this miserable end.'

Really, he could afford a private doctor,

but decided he'd have some cut-price medical care.

I can't say I'm proud of THAT particular antecedent.

'After William died, his widow Emily appears to have continued to hide

'the family wealth,

'throwing herself on the mercy of charity to send Archie to poor school and Wilfred to the orphanage.

'But with ten children to support,

'it was only Harold who she chose to send to public school.'

The way she dealt with at least one of her children was bizarre,

sending him to an orphanage when he wasn't an orphan.

Another one, she got into public school somehow.

All of that was occurring and at the same time,

um...if there's any...

Well, it wouldn't amount to insanity.

..any bizarreness, any weirdness

in the family, I suppose that's the strain.

-I'm very glad it's died out.

-HE CHUCKLES

'Could it be that this story of family injustice

'is why Archie passed on the importance of education

'to his young grandson, Neil Kinnock, something that would guide

'the rest of his political life?

'Now, Neil is travelling back to Wales,

'where he will learn the final chapter in his story,

'and the effects of World War I on the Kinnock family.

'His grandfather, Archie, as a coal miner,

'was in a reserved occupation.

'His brother, Harold, was a civil servant in London.

'And Wilfred? What had become of him?

'By now, he'd become a professional soldier

'in one of Wales's most famous regiments.

'To learn of Wilfred's story,

'Neil is travelling across the Brecon Beacons.

'He's come to the heart of Brecon town,

'to the museum of the South Wales Borderers.

'Neil will shortly learn that he's here

'because this is the regiment Wilfred Kinnock joined before the First World War.

'But was it the promise of comradeship that drew Wilfred,

'the boy from the orphanage, to join up?

'Neil's here to follow the story

'of his grandfather Archie's brother, Wilfred Kinnock.

'Wilfred joined the South Wales Borderers

'four years before the outbreak of World War I.

'Although Neil doesn't yet know it,

'this portrait is of Wilfred's commanding officer.

'Neil joins Mike Churchill-Jones.'

Wilfred joined the South Wales Borderers in 1910.

-So he was a regular soldier.

-Yeah.

-Joined the 1st Battalion.

He never rose above the rank of private.

He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Um...

During one of those battles, the Battle of the Somme in July 1916,

he fought in a battle at Memetz Wood.

-Memetz Wood, obviously, was a very bloody battle.

-Yes.

Across three battalions, 400 South Wales Borderers lost their lives.

Great casualties in the Welsh regiments.

'The odds were stacked firmly against Wilfred, but...'

Miraculously, he survived that battle.

-So maybe his luck was finally changing.

-Mm.

'In fact, Archie, Harold AND Wilfred Kinnock all lived through the war

'to the final call for peace by the Germans in October 1918.'

We've got Emily, who's probably...

-She's overjoyed.

-Yes.

-Her sons have survived the war.

'The front page of the Western Mail proclaimed the good news.

'This headline was dated Monday October 7 1918.

'The following day, October 8, the regimental diary also recorded...'

"Kinnock Wilfred Hayman. Nationality, United Kingdom.

"Rank, private. Regiment, South Wales Borderers.

"Aged 27.

"Date of death, 8th October 1918."

-The day the war ended, or shortly afterwards.

-That was...

The Armistice, as you know, was on 11th November.

'Although Wilfred was killed on October 8th,

'Emily would have known nothing of this tragedy until notified later

'by a letter from his commanding officer.

'In the midst of national celebration of peace,

'Emily would receive news that Wilfred,

'the child she had given up to the orphanage, had died

'in the very last days of the war.'

-That's the Victory medal, isn't it?

-The Military medal...

'Emily would receive Wilfred's medals posthumously,

'along with a memorial plaque,

'one of over a million issued to the families of the fallen.'

Well...

-Did you know about Wilfred?

-No. I didn't know about Wilfred.

-He didn't have a very lucky life, did he?

-He didn't.

-No.

Especially to be robbed of it

when the war was effectively over.

-Do you think Archie would have known?

-Archie would have known about it.

I just feel sorry for Wilfred. His father dies when he's two.

He's in an orphanage from the age of four

till at least 14.

And...

then he joins the army.

He served under the colours for four years, five years,

from the age of 22, 23, and then he died.

'With ten children to bring up,

'Emily chose to place Wilfred in an orphanage,

'but she would never have forgotten him.

'He alone had been christened with her family name, Hayman.'

He's the only child with the mother's name.

She effectively abandons him when he's four years of age.

This is why, in this whole experience,

I'd like to take a magic pill

to get back and say,

"Great-grandmother, what the HELL were you thinking of?

"Why did you have to do it?"

'Neil was so close to his grandfather, Archie,

'but there's so much in the family story that he didn't share with him.

'Maybe he was protecting him from his past.

'Now, nearly at the end of his journey,

'how much has this changed what Neil knew of his family story?'

All the messages given to me by my grandfather,

to whom I was very close, knew very well and loved very much,

were that he detested, despised his father.

So much so that the impression that I gathered

and have carried in all the decades since,

51 years,

have been that my grandfather ran away from a bullying father.

But he was only nine when his father died.

And so, that is an invention,

unconscious invention, of my imagination.

'Neil has learnt revealing stories of distant ancestors

'and close family,

'and the events that brought the Kinnocks to Wales.

'Now, with his journey over, how does Neil feel about coming home?'

I've been very fortunate, privileged, indeed,

to have my story told,

but never with the fullness that's been available

as a consequence of Coming Home.

My children and grandchildren will thoroughly enjoy it.

My preoccupation has always been with the future.

Now we can feel

bitter, angry about some of the past.

But it's tomorrow that matters.

And part of my children and grandchildren's tomorrow

is where they came from.

So they already want to know and see,

and they do and they will.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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