Shirley Williams Conversations

Hello and welcome to Conversations.

Today, my guest is a woman whose

career has spanned not just

party and class divides

but political eras, too.

She started in the Labour movement,

co-founded a successful new party,

the SDP, and eventually became

a leading light in

the Liberal Democrats.

All along, this woman -

once tipped to be Britain's first

woman Prime Minister -

has enjoyed almost universal

personal popularity from all sides

of the political spectrum.

She was born into a family

which challenged the political

status quo and sparkled

with a strong spirit of campaigning

- a spirit she's carried

with her ever since.

Her former SDP colleague,

Bill Rogers, once said,

even if you're walking up a hill

with her, she wants

to be ahead of you.

So let's try and catch up

with Shirley Williams.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

Let's start at the beginning.

You had, I suppose, what many people

would consider quite a privileged

childhood in what was then Bohemian

Chelsea.

Did that affect your view

of the world and your

politics, do you think?

Well I had a combination

because my father had been

a Roman Catholic convert -

largely converted, I think,

probably by listening to a great

deal of what was said by...

One or two of the great

Catholics of the period,

and he took me to church

regularly every Sunday.

What was true about him

was that he knew a huge

amount about it all.

He went back through centuries

with huge knowledge.

That was surprising because he was

a very strong Labour man.

He stood for Parliament two or three

times, never got elected.

But was very keen to

get into Parliament.

He wouldn't have been

very good at it.

It wasn't his sort of thing.

So why do you think he wouldn't

have been good at it?

Because he was very

much an intellectual.

I don't mean clever.

I mean, lots of people can

intellectuals and can be clever.

But what he was was somebody

who loved the more mysterious

aspects of theology.

He was quite sympathetic

towards Anglicans because his own

father had been an Anglican vicar.

So he was really quite well

immolated in discussions

on religion and so forth.

My mother, of course,

came from an Anglican background

but had been extremely critical

of the role of the Anglican Church

during the First World War,

when things were constantly

presented as being for

the sake of the country.

You must put all other

thoughts behind you.

She, of course, out of that

experience, first became

a war nurse, a VAD -

Voluntary Aid Detachment -

nurse, at first mostly

in France, in the war.

She actually served a lot

of the First World War on the front,

not on the back, which was unusual

for a woman.

So between the two of them,

although it could be called

a privileged background in some

ways, they were both

hugely hard working.

My mother had a very disciplined

approach to writing.

She loved writing

but was very strict.

You started writing at 9.30am,

after you'd had breakfast,

and you worked all the way

through until about 7pm at night,

when you had one drink.

A cocktail, as they always

called them in those days,

followed by a bit of family life.

But there's no doubt about it,

she did a good 10 hours a day

of writing, and she was absolutely

devoted to it.

Now, your mother was Vera Brittain

and, of course, she was wrote

a memorial to her fiancee

and her brother in

Testament of Youth.

So by the time you were growing up,

she was a very famous

author, wasn't she?

She was a best-selling author, yes.

And in 1936, when Victor

Gollancz, one of the...

The book was rejected by about half

a dozen well-known publishers,

who sort of couldn't believe that

a woman could write

a book about war, anyway.

It was a very odd idea to them.

And the fact that she probably

wrote, I would argue,

one of the best single books

about the First World War,

along with people who became very

famous also, like Siegfried Sassoon

and so forth.

But she was in that group,

that kind of outstanding authors

of the war who actually

served in it.

Robert Graves was another.

All of that meant that she she

couldn't see herself in the very

conventional terms her own parents

had seen her in, which she was

an attractive young woman

who would marry a fairly well-placed

businessman in Derbyshire,

where they came from.

And therefore, for them,

it was a huge jerk.

Really difficult to actually accept

not only that their daughter

was a military nurse

but that she was going to serve

in another country.

and towards the end of the war,

in the last year, her father

saw that his wife -

her mother, in other words -

was beginning to find it too hard

to cope without the servants,

of all things.

There were not many

servants to be had.

They were back in the

munitions factories.

And so she was told,

she was ordered to come home

and look after her mother.

And, of course, my mother

was a person with very strong views

and very strong opinions.

She was outraged by the idea

that she would leave hundreds

of men, most of them dying

in the middle of France, and come

back to look after her mother,

who had nothing wrong with her.

because her mother had

to cope without servants.

The Edwardian era, in many ways,

was very, very class structured.

Very much the case of the middle

classes living with servants,

with people making fires

and all that kind of thing.

So the whole of the change

that we saw in the Second World War,

in the way the country became much

more social democratic, didn't

happen in the First World War.

There was a sort of slow fading out,

but it was a long, long process.

So when you were growing up,

were your parents very hands

on or did they have help

and servants as well?

My parents, because my mother worked

full-time, my parents had one house

keeper who was about 20,

a young woman from Battersea,

across the river.

And they also had occasional members

of her family who came in and helped

planning parties and so on.

We were very close to them.

They were my other parents, really.

They were probably more hands-on

than my mother and father were.

Particularly my mother, because my

father was fond of children.

But he have the view of his time,

which is that you didn't have

much to do with them

in any physical sense.

You wouldn't have dreamt of changing

a nappy or even dressing them.

But what you would do is have

serious conversations with them.

As they grew up you would actually

talk to them about politics, life,

religion, whatever it might be.

But not much before

you were about 10 or 11.

So how often did you see your

parents during the day?

If they were both working.

Hardly at all.

It was a very sort

of arranged routine.

If I got back from school in time,

I would have tea with them.

That was a another sacred

occasion lasting half

an hour at 4pm or 4.30pm.

With crumpets in the winter

and scones in the summer.

But that was the sort of high

moment of childish eating,

and then I would not

stay for dinner.

Dinner was something

that grown-ups had.

We had a high tea at 5pm and then

we were in bed by 7pm.

And the idea of going

to bed at 10pm, 11pm,

which is what my own grandchildren

do, would be unthinkable

in that way.

Also, maybe because it's

worth adding, it's quite

interesting to add it...

The other great feature

of my childhood was that

I was extremely adventurous

and during the war, when my parents'

house was was bombed, it split.

It was a Georgian

house in Cheyne Walk.

Reflecting my mother's

success, I suppose -

it can't have been a cheap

house to buy.

But Cheyne Walk with right

along the river, sitting

in the heart of London,

and it was bombed quite a lot.

And I remember this

particular occasion.

The house, it didn't

fall down but it split,

it cracked down the middle.

The other thing we did,

I used to climb all over the house,

picking up shrapnel.

I loved doing that!

When my parents weren't watching.

the house was a Georgian

house, four stories high.

And it had a lot of little terraces

- not terraces, little flat roofs.

And you'd have to go and collect

the shrapnel from the flat roofs,

otherwise it would begin

to burn its way through.

I loved doing that.

I spent quite a lot of time sitting

on the roof as well, of this house,

looking at the Thames below.

Eventually I learnt how to climb

under the bridges across the Thames.

I used to watch the Blitz from those

metal, I suppose supports,

you'd call them, under

Chelsea Bridge and the

Royal Albert Bridge,

which was already shaking a bit,

because it was a very

delicate bridge.

And I loved doing that.

Did your parents know

you were doing that?

Of course not.

I thoroughly enjoyed the war.

That's an awful thing to say.

I'm talking about being nine or 10.

But I did thoroughly enjoy it,

I did find it very exciting

and I quite often would escape,

long after my parents were asleep,

and walk around and walk over

to the bridges and sit

underneath them and then come back.

Then life got more exciting

after all that because my parents

There is reason social Democrat

because I refused to go to private

school. I was six or seven. I was a

little school called Mrs Spencer's

school. One of those places like

private school, a nice school with

middle-class parents and clean

uniforms. Which I could not stand!

What did you not like? I was

already, I learned from parents to

hate class. I hated class. Around

the corner from where we lived,

there was a big council estate which

is still there, at the end of

Chelsea. That council estate became

the students of a very old Victorian

state school. Church of England

school. It was called... Saint

Peter's church school. Anglican

school. I went there because my

mother's housekeeper, aged 19 or 20,

her parents had sent their children

there. It was a school that appealed

to me so I went there, Alan told my

mother I did not wish her to

introduce herself to them. That was

fine. I always went down the stairs

to the basement. Some of my fellow

students, pupils, primary school,

they always thought I was Amy's.

Because that is where she lived and

I always thought that way so we

didn't have problems about being the

daughter of a famous author. Not

that that ever came up!

Then life got more exciting

after all that because my parents

had a sort of long light of agony.

In which they had learnt

that they were probably

on the Gestapo black list.

I think I'm right in saying

that my parents, both

of them were Christians.

I think they were the only

Christian married couple,

because there were many Jewish

married couples on the

on Gestapo black list.

And I've got the page

which they were on.

The reason I know about

that is because my parents,

my mother's name was Brittain

and my father's name

was Catlin and so inevitably

they were in the same

group as Churchill.

And that meant that all the popular

newspapers had to have that picture

of Churchill's name in that list.

But fortunately, it included

both my parents as well.

And what was key about that was that

my mother was a conscientious

objector after the First World War.

She became a pacifist.

She'd lost every young man

in her family, including her brother

and her fiancee, and she became

absolutely determined

and my mother was determined,

she was very determined,

She was right, she wouldn't move.

And so they decided, my parents

decided after a long conversation,

they very high minded people

I should say, that although they

wouldn't leave themselves,

because they would immediately -

my mother in particular -

be accused of fleeing.

The author of Mrs Miniver,

Jan Struther, also fled.

Although hers was also a book

all about the British

in the Second World War.

But my mother was made of sterner

stuff so she wasn't going to flee.

And having decided not to,

my father having decided not to,

either, they decided that it was not

fair of them to keep my brother

and me in Britain to face

the probable killing

of their parents.

People forget now that in 1940,

up until about the summer before

the Battle of Britain,

there was a general belief

that this was going to be...

There was going to be an invasion

and that we might well

have lost that invasion.

They sent you and your brother

to America, didn't they?

They sent us to America.

So it wasn't just an evacuation

out into the country?

No, no, no.

On the other side of the world?

Well, we got a telegram,

I remember, which said,

send us your children.

To, of all places, Minnesota.

And the great thing

about that was that most

all of the other children that

were evacuated to America

were evacuated to either work

colleagues or friends,

who were also very much

sort of New England,

very European-minded and so forth

and so on.

Minnesota was something else again.

I remember when I first got there,

a state which has a very substantial

number of Scandinavian

and German migrants,

I was seen as rather dangerous,

I mean, what was I doing?

Almost like a spy or a reverse spy.

Minnesota was certainly

not very keen.

Were they isolationist?

I mean, it's obviously before

America was in the war.

No.

Minnesota under Hubert Humphrey,

who was the governor of Minnesota,

who was a distinctly liberal-minded

and internationally-minded young

man, famous throughout America.

He was the most distinguished

Democrat around.

They weren't isolationist,

what they were, they were sort

of left wing but keeping out of it.

They didn't really want to join

the war, they weren't keen on it.

But they weren't, in any sense,

what one might call Trump-ites.

They weren't right wing Americans.

And how did their attitude change

towards you after Pearl Harbor?

Dramatically.

Well, they were always

very sweet to me.

By this time I was 10.

And so I was known as the little

English girl or the little

evacuee or whatever it was.

I was treated in a sort

of idealised way.

Which was very sweet of them.

I went to a nice school and had

lots of friends and we went climbing

along the Mississippi and so forth.

Had a lovely time, actually.

And it was a great place to be.

And I was always treated very well.

But after Pearl Harbor I became

a heroine and therefore I was asked

to actually present a sheaf

of flowers to Lady Halifax.

Lord Halifax, who had been

a well-known appeaser

before the war, had become

ambassador to America.

It's a very distinguished

position to hold.

And his wife, in the best English

style, walked around the country

dishing out flowers to people

and shaking their hands and putting

up the flag and things like that.

She behaved very properly.

And I was therefore specially chosen

to present him with flowers,

which I deeply resented,

because I knew that the Halifaxes

were conservative.

By this time I was very

far gone in politics.

But I was polite.

At least I was polite,

I wasn't particularly friendly,

so I stayed in America...

But that wasn't your only starring

role, potentially, was it?

Because you also were almost

the star of National Velvet.

Yes, that's correct.

The film critics of America in each

region were asked to put forward

the names of people that might have

been the hero in National Velvet.

And I remember they

had to be blonde.

They had to be good at riding.

They had to be around the age of 12.

They had to know how to jump fences.

They had to be sort of a perfect

little model of what one might think

National Velvet is all about.

And I was put forward

by the middle west states.

It was Elizabeth Taylor

who pipped you to the post?

Elizabeth Taylor was

very famous already.

Her mother was in California

with her so she had the exceptional

advantage of having a mother

who is very familiar with the whole

of the Hollywood scene,

and got her daughter to come,

and she was a very pretty,

handsome little girl and a good

rider and all the other things.

So she did pip me to the post.

Did you meet her

during the auditions?

I did meet her but only that.

I shook her hands.

She was already a very good looking

girl, but still a girl,

a child, not yet a grown up.

But a good actress and very

carefully thinking through

all the things she did.

And I had to say, for the rest

of my life, one of the great

pleasures of my life,

I think, thank God I didn't

actually get that role.

So we then got into...

My parents tried to bring me home.

Now, we must talk...

On the way back, there

was an incident, wasn't

there, you were attacked

by a group of sailors?

Yes, that's right.

It was a a Portuguese ship.

Portugal was neutral.

So it was one of the very few

countries whose ships could carry

people from the aggressor nations,

as they were thought of being,

whether it was Germany on the one

side or UK and France on the other.

And that meant that there

was a very, very limited choice.

You couldn't go back

in a military convoy,

that was limited to people

who were actually capable

of being combat soldiers

or sailors when they got back.

My brother went back in a military

convoy and then joined the RAF.

He was older than I was.

But I couldn't have gone

on the military convoy,

they wouldn't have let me go.

So my parents found this ship,

I think through Thomas Cook's,

which went to Lisbon,

it didn't go to Britain.

And we then found a great friend

called Rosemary who's been my friend

from then almost till now.

But she died before me, I'm afraid.

And we then had, we were

surrounded by sailors.

After the Azores, where

we stopped, also by soldiers,

because it was turned

into a troopship, for the last part.

We had a cyclone, which

practically killed us.

At one point, the captain

almost decided to give up,

because the cyclone

was very strong indeed.

And then we had this group

of sailors, I don't know

whether they were military sailors

or not, but anyway, they had decided

to attack us in our cabin.

And we fought like,

we fought like cats to get

out, my friend and I.

We weren't terribly frightened,

just frighteningly angry.

Anyway, we got out,

and then we were running

down the corridors,

and genius struck us both,

my friend Rosemary and me,

and we decided that the one thing

that the Portuguese would not dare

to find us in was a Gents.

So we rushed into a Gents,

locked the door, stayed

there for a very long time,

and then finally, you know,

several hours, and finally left,

and after that we decided

we were too obvious.

Too obvious potential victims.

So what we did was we then kitted

out one of the lifeboats

on the top deck with,

you know, a mixture of tarpaulin

and everything we could find.

And that's where we stayed

for the next three days,

every night, as soon as it got

dark, after dinner.

We climbed up to the top shelf,

got into this lifeboat,

covered it with tarpaulins,

couldn't be seen to be

where we were, kept reasonably warm.

An awful lot of sea decided

to beat us on the top,

but that's where we stayed.

And so we escaped further attention.

That sounds like it was a very

frightening incident.

I mean, that's the attempted sexual

assault of a child, isn't it?

That's what we're talking about.

Of course, we weren't

even teenagers yet.

I guess, I think I was nine.

But no, forgive me.

Well, 12 or 13.

Yes, 12, more like 12,

but still, a young 12.

We were blondes, which I suppose

made us rather irresistible.

Did you tell anybody about it?

No, absolutely not.

Why not?

Omerta.

You know, the central

understanding of a child

who is growing into a teenager,

in those days, particularly,

was that you fought for yourself.

We'd been for three

years on our own.

Well, I don't know about Rosemary,

I had anyway, except for my brother,

and then once he went back

to Britain, I was

entirely on my own.

I was just used to

fighting for myself.

Looking after myself, ever since the

shrapnel days conveyed had been the

same story. When we got back to

Britain, even that was a long story

that I will make it very brief. We

got landed in Lisbon to catch the

plane that was actually the plane

that was shot down with Lesley

Howard on board, and all planes were

stopped, because they were wide open

to being shot at. And that meant

that we, and by we I mean the other

children who were now on the boat,

as well as myself, we all decided,

well, we got bored stiff, rosemary

and I, we were both a sort of

adventurous pair, so we actually ran

away to Lisbon. And what was funny

about Lisbon, we stayed in what I

suppose you would call the baggage

room, and we jumped off when we got

to Lisbon, from being not seen, and

fled into the city, and that turned

out to be full of spies. There were

lots and lots of people. Do remember

there was a famous actor called

Conrad fight, it will always -- who

always wore a monocle, and every

film's idea of what a spider looks

like. When we got to Lisbon, it was

full of Conrads. There was British

ones, German ones, most were

probably German, and we finally got

dumped by the students we had met up

to in Lisbon who had shown a

surround the city, because they got

scared, because there was a very

strong secret police group. So we

knew that sooner or later, our

friends who were very sweet and

bought us food and things, would

probably be in terrible trouble, and

then radio programmes in Portuguese

much we didn't understand, which

said a couple of British have

disappeared, and we don't know what

to do with them. So they explain to

us rather tearfully they would have

to give us up, and then left us on

the front porch of the rather

surprisingly the editor of the voice

of Lisbon newspaper, who turned out

innovatively to be a friend of my

father's, but I didn't know anything

about that, he hasn't told me, and

he had no idea I was in Lisbon

anyway, were supposed to be in

detention in Estoril, the famous

royal capital. Anyway, we got back

from Portugal, to England, and found

it rather exciting, if a little bit

dreary. And within resumed a

different kind of life. I then got

inevitably back to Saint Paul's, and

yielded to my parents finally that I

couldn't go back to the local

elementary school. By this time it

was secondary anyway. So I went to

St Paul's, and then stayed there for

the next few years, very good

school, wonderful academic

challenge. Lots of very nice girls,

lots of brilliant Jewish girls, who

were the children of people who had

been various refugees from Germany.

St Paul's appealed to them because

it had a very strong musical

tradition, including just a holster

and his daughter --

and his daughter -- to Fuller. We

whizzed through school, nothing very

special about that, I decided I

didn't want to do the equivalent

available is.

So I left school when I was 17,

I never took A-levels.

and got it so when I got invited

to go to Oxford.

Towards the end of the study

of students there I was outraged.

I came to the conclusion

that this was my mother's

influence so suddenly,

I was called in to see

the principal Dame Janet,

who was a wonderful very far left

wing scientific lady,

and I remember going up and saying.

and I remember going up and saying,

the first thing I said

was I don't want your

bloody scholarship,

now

nine out of ten would have said

that I don't want you.

But she did.

She said, Come now tell me

why I was so angry.

So I said I am angry

because I cannot bear this use

of an influence or words to it.

You know my politics don't you.

What makes you think I would accept

salary as the reason

of their parents being well now.

So that silenced me. We became great

friends. So I became and had what

they now call a gap year. I worked

as a waitress in Whitley Bay in

Northumberland, because I wanted to

know the North, and I wanted to get

to know what it was like to have no

advantages at all. It was like back

to Christchurch school, really. So I

worked for a while at first there,

and then I worked on a farm. At that

time I did find out a lot about the

north-east of England, I got to know

it well. I remember, because I was

always hungry, there was a very nice

railway marshalling officer who

always gave me sponge cakes to eat,

which was nice. And in Whitley Bay,

all we ever had to eat was chips.

Chips and T.

And have you decided on

a political career at that stage?

Delie I was already long engaged in

it. I joined the Labour Party on my

16th birthday, which is as young as

you are supposed to

joint.

View

became an MP relatively young,

elected in your 30s, 1964. What is

it like being a young woman MP in

the 1960s House of Commons?

Well,

part of it was lovely,

part of it was lovely, because

Labour was going strong, and I was

so excited by the National Health

Service and all the things that came

with it.

It was a wonderful, wonderful

time to be in politics

because whether we did

or leave it there.

I did.

You saw this new society

being built before your eyes.

You were part of it.

It was wonderfully exciting.

Were you ambitious when you

were in the Commons,

were you one of those employees that

arrived thinking as soon

as the opportunity comes.

Not really I don't think, partly

because I had a seat in Hitchin

which had always been Conservative

and I'd spent an awful lot of time

on it, and one of the great things

about that too was that I spent

an awful lot of time in the new town

of Stevenage, which was one

of the biggest parts

of the new constituency

a very big constituency.

And I had the great pleasure

of growing up alongside my town.

So as Stevenage grew

into being a grown-up town, having

been really a very small town

to begin with and then

developed hugely for a quarter

of a million people,

I also had a lot to do with I more

than most employees do

because I was always being involved

in legal changes or structural

changes or whatever that meant.

When I gave my first speech

in the House of Commons

it was actually about international

finance, because I was blowed

if I was to be identified

as a young woman politician.

I got a lot of...

A sort of a mixture

of surprise and patronage

from the Conservatives.

And a bit of mixed feelings

from the trade union members

of the Labour Party,

who saw me as odd, I suppose.

But the difficult one is mostly

to do with elderly Tories

who thought it was odd

to have a young woman anyway.

And I always remember a famous case

and the bells ringing in the house

from when I was running back and,

you know, they were ringing

for a vote and I had no idea

what the vote was about, just

doing a meeting.

So I seized my pair.

You always have somebody of another

party that you pair with a sweet man

And I said to him,

what's the vote about?

Don't bother yourself a bit, I said.

Look, I've got a vote.

Tell me.

So he finally said very reluctantly,

he actually patted me on the head

and said, my dear,

don't bother your pretty

little head about it.

It was the first bill

for legalizing homosexual

relations between adults.

He found the very idea of telling me

appalling! Very sweet man.

appalling! Very sweet man.

You were

talking about things that they would

not expect a young female MP to talk

about. You caught the eye of Harold

Wilson and the leadership of the

Labour Party. Andy Roddick Cabinet

Minister but then a relatively short

space of time. Secretary of State

for prices? Are not quite sure, what

would that we in the equivalent

government?

government?

Harold Wilson is

underestimated.

I've never seen any other politician

of seniority who is completely

unaffected by color,

race, gender, religion.

He was a true academic who chose

people we thought were good.

But he didn't.

He wasn't the least bit influenced

by factors other prime ministers

are clearly affected

by and he was casteless.

He is a wonderful man in many ways

but he is quite difficult

to get close to, he kept himself

rather privately and here

If you look at his record you'll see

that time and again...

He was very open-minded for his

time. Going back quickly to prices.

Basically the whole economic

structure at that time was based

upon prices and incomes policy and

the government position, which

largely because it did not want to

have unemployment... Its

unemployment is the most dangerous

thing it could be associated with

and there was very little

unemployment in those years, rather

like now. It was associated very

much indeed with inflation.

Inflation was running at 18%. As we

came out of the Heath government.

Very high levels. The choice was for

the government 's... Either letting

inflation rise and using

unemployment to stop it or, as

Harold Wilson and Roy Jenkins did,

to actually watch inflation and

control that by prices. I was the

person, the mug who had to make sure

prices were acceptable to the trade

unions. That is to say, prices would

not exceed a level of inflation,

would stay the same as the overall

level. And you would then have to

use every measure you could. The

main measure was called fair prices.

Everything Mark White with prices,

we had signs made in the centres of

cities, what is cheapest place to

buy something... A huge amount of

information to go with price

control. Alongside me was Michael

Foot, in charge of wages. As you can

imagine, this curious hair. In

charge of this whole system of

trying to control the market. So

that it could not just eat up

unemployment as the only thing that

could slow down.

It worked quite

well, actually. He also served with

James Callaghan. You were Erik

Compton entry about Harold Wilson.

Portraying him as a much more

radical figure. And people consider

right now. How did those prime

ministers compare?

Jim was a great

traditional Labour Party figure and

he was close to the unions because

they were essentially part of what

it was to be Labour. Very nice thing

about Jim, he was a very good man,

very loving and I remember one of

the things that he did that

impressed me was he always left open

the door of his carriage...

as he went down to his

constituency in south Wales.

So people would come and talk to him

and he would never close it.

And so he would come sit

there waiting and a steady

trail of Welsh voters

would walk up this train,

knowing that they would get

a welcome when they got

to the other end.

He was everybody's grandfather, he

was a good man and I was very fond

of him. I was closer to him than

Harold, I admired Harold but I like

Jim. And he was a man who was really

concerned about families and what

they could contribute in life. Once

he said to me, he said, the day that

he was elected as Prime Minister, I

think Ted Bryn Hughes was the

chairman of the Parliamentary party

and he came in to tell him what had

happened in the election. Of the

Parliamentary party. Very unlike

now. I will add a footnote, very

important, both Harold and Jim, they

were people who deeply believed in

Parliament. They can be critical of

it but there were Labour

parliamentarians. They never took

the view that Parliament must have

the enemy of the Labour Party. It

was undermining the elites. That is

a new view which they did not share

in any way. On the day that Jim was

told he had been elected by a

substantial majority, the first

thing he said was, and I never went

to university... And he never did.

Left school at 15. Never went to any

other form of higher education. But

he so loved the idea that when he

was Prime Minister, before that he

was Chancellor of the Exchequer,

every week or every couple of weeks

he would go up to Nuffield College

and have a seminar there with the

dons who would talk to him about how

to be the Chancellor of the

Exchequer! He loved it. He got his

education when he was already a

senior minister.

Did you consider yourself

to be his successor?

No.

Were you ever thinking,

I might be the leader?

No, no not really.

A lot of other people talked

about you as a potential

leader, didn't they?

Oh yes.

Later on, after I'd been

in the Cabinet seven years they did,

that's quite true

and I stood against

Michael Foot but I lost

by about 20 plus.

I didn't lose by a lot

but I did lose.

I didn't think I was

quite good enough.

Quite simply.

And that's something

that's changed with women.

Maybe I think, looking back now,

I wasn't as bad as I thought I was.

But my parents had brought me up

to have huge respect

for the leaders of the Labour Party.

They knew a lot of them

and admired them.

They thought that

they were great men.

All men, except for Ellen Wilkinson.

Therefore, although I

was never brought up

that way by my parents,

of all people.

I came to believe in politics that

I just wasn't good enough.

Now if you'd say

who was among women?

I would have said Barbara Castle.

She was probably too left

wing to become easily

the leader of the party

but the extraordinary courage

that she showed in places of strife,

which was would have ended a lot

of the unnecessary strikes

and so forth that happened

in that period of time,

is a very brave thing

for a woman of the left to do.

And she did it, she fought

for it, she stuck with it.

But at the end of the day

even people like Jim

abandoned her because it

went down very badly

with the trade unions.

Do you regret looking back

that you felt perhaps

you weren't good enough?

Probably.

Not very deeply.

It doesn't upset me.

I managed to build up... I remember

Denis Healey talking about the

hinterland, I build that up,

including politically, because I

have spent a lot of time nowadays

working in other countries. Project

Liberty, about bringing Eastern

Europe into the European Union,

which I have always been a

passionate supporter. Looking

around, I spent time in Russia and

in Europe, almost all those working

on the process of trying to get

these countries within Europe as

democratic countries and I found it

very exciting and challenging. Even

went as far as Moscow, I worked with

Gorbachev's plans for a new

constitution for Russia. I had a

great... Also India and other

places. It became more

international.

1979, you lost your seat.

Yes.

And that must be

a very difficult time

for you because you suddenly found

yourself outside of parliament.

You'd been a really big figure

in British politics, you've been

a Cabinet Minister and you've

been at the heart of

the Labour government.

And then within 18 months,

two years you were out

of the Labour Party

altogether.

Was Europe one of the big

things that pushed you?

People don't realise...

There's a play running at

the moment called Limehouse.

In the Donmar theatre.

And what's quite striking

is that almost nobody...

Most people put it down to me

fighting the hard left.

Well, I did fight the hard

left but that wasn't

the reason because the battle

was still going on and it was this

battle about whether

we were fundamentally

a parliamentary party,

whether we wanted to include people

into the Labour Party or among other

things on cross-party positions

like Europe and so forth,

and I was already by this time

a very passionate European.

What I saw in 1979 was first of all

that there would be a hard struggle

and it was because Mrs Thatcher and

Mr Heath were very different people,

I knew Mr Heath very well and we

shared a certain European passion

that Mrs Thatcher did not know she

had moments.

She wanted the single

market. That famous shot of her in

matchup with all of those flags.

The

key thing was, she was a passionate,

the begetter of the single market.

She said to the Secretary-General of

the European Community that the one

thing she would accept as a step

forward towards greater integrity

and integration, excuse me, was

precisely that it was going to be

part of the single market. She

always saw things in economic and

commercial terms but having seen

them that way, she became an

enthusiastic champion of the single

market and of course, she had at

your right hand, the great maker,

Lord Coe field, a civil servant, but

one who Mrs Thatcher admired and

often followed and he went out to

build that single market and before

the 70s, before the 1980s right, it

was. I do find it extraordinary that

we are thinking of leaving the stop

it has been extremely useful to us.

So you found the SDP.

We have the Limehouse Declaration,

the Gang of Four.

September 1981.

There's a byelection in Crosby

in Merseyside and you become

the first Member of Parliament to be

elected for the SDP and we've got

a little clip of that moment here.

This is not for us a party,

but a crusade and an attempt to find

a democratic alternative

to what we believe to be the growing

extremism of politics in Britain.

The move in the Labour Party

towards the rejection

of parliamentary democracy.

A move in the Conservative Party

to a level of unemployment that

threatens the very social fabric

of our society.

And we want to thank, finally,

the electors of the Crosby division,

for giving us this opportunity

to again put forward in this country

a new democratic initiative.

That's a moment

of political history.

Of course what a lot of people

who perhaps don't know a lot

about Merseyside may appreciate

is that Crosby in the 1980s wasn't

just a Conservative seat,

it was a rock solid

Conservative seat.

There's was a 19,000 majority,

I think, Graham Page had,

the MP who died and whose death

triggered the by-election.

Did it seem to you that it was going

to be this impossible task?

But you just had to go

for it because you're

at the beginning of a new party?

Or were you confident

you were going to overturn that?

If you're a new party,

you build yourself up,

by-election by by-election.

The thing you have to be

absolutely clear about is that

if you are a leader of that party,

one of the leaders,

then it's your turn.

The next one that comes up is yours.

As it happened, I was rather lucky

because my father's father had been

a clergyman in Liverpool itself.

Therefore my father was born

in Liverpool and I had a collection,

rather unexpectedly.

But I thought it was so exciting

because it was a strange mixture

of very left wing in Waterloo

and parts of old Liverpool

and unspeakably posh golf playing

in the areas that were close

to Birkdale and Southport.

The constituency was made up of

these two totally different things.

The two subjects that

were really intense,

One was the subject of...

Here we go again,

the grammar schools.

Merchant Taylor was

a famous private school.

I was already identified very much

because I'd been Secretary of State

for Education for four years

from 1975 to 1979.

And I was a passionate

pro-comprehensive.

So this became a hugely...

As you might imagine.

Yes, because by that time Crosby,

unusually perhaps, had a number

of fee-paying schools,

some of which had been grammar

schools or direct grant schools.

So there was kind of a resentment

towards you, wasn't there?

Because people felt they had

lost their grammar schools.

Because of the head

teachers and so on.

I didn't get rid of the grammar.

Well, I did get rid of the grammar

school but actually it took quite

a long time to get there,

but I was identified and always have

been with the comprehensive school

and I was passionate believer in it.

I remember getting invited

to the really very posh private

schools of Crosby to sort of stand

up to a fairly sharp

set of questions.

But Liverpool and Merseyside at that

time was very clearly back to class

structures because it had very posh

parts of Merseyside

and very poor parts.

With a large gap between the two.

That was what I knew about it.

We fought some other things,

we haven't got time to go into it.

But one thing in particular

in Crosby at that time

that was central was corporal

punishment and capital punishment.

And so I also had huge battles

about capital punishment,

which was still allowed.

And corporal punishment,

mostly seen in schools.

And therefore there were other

issues, not just the issue

of comprehensive schools.

But it was a wonderfully

friendly place.

People might argue with you and pull

your leg, they might call

you all sorts of things.

But it was a place that's

great fun to be in.

Great fun to work in.

And at that point did you think

the SDP was going to become a party

of government and this

was the beginning of a new party

that wasn't just going to influence

politics but you were actually

going to be taking charge?

Probably at some of the time, yes.

Some of the time?

And as we then ran into the sharp

altercations about whether we merged

with the Liberal Party.

And, of course, those

of us, like Bill and I,

who were conscious of the fact

that there was not room for several

parties in the centre left,

and of course that meant that we had

to decide whether we would

or wouldn't join the Liberals.

We both felt the same way.

I dont think David Owen ever did.

But Bill and I did.

We felt as if there's going to be

a serious contention

by parties at the centre left,

then there had to be only one

party and that's why

we merged with the Liberals,

who at that time under David Steel

were very much in the same

part of the country,

so to speak, as one

another as we were.

What about the people

who were still in the Labour Party

who thought of themselves

as being part of that social

democratic centre left tradition?

Well, a lot of them joined.

We actually had a kind of amazing,

huge flow in, rather

like the Labour Party did

when Jeremy Corbyn was elected.

But the difference was that the Gang

of Four were all clearly centre left

and all clearly Parliamentary.

They had all been Members

of Parliament or Cabinet

Ministers or whatever.

So we didn't see ourselves

as sort of an elite group.

We saw ourselves as coming out

of a long tradition,

but with this particular factor,

which I mentioned in that little

bit that you had shown,

of having to be Parliamentary

and we always rejected

the idea of having an elite.

And now it is rather strange to me

to see the Unite union backing a

leader to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn,

because, you know, that's not where

it should be, and we would say no,

the leader has been elected and if

Jeremy Corbyn goes, it is because

the party has decided to elect

somebody else. But what will not do

is to have it organised by one of

the big organisations that support

the Labour Party, I would say the

same about the Conservative Party.

Do you have a feeling of, this is

where I came in, this is where I was

years ago?

It is a bit like that,

the intensity of political feeling

in the country, the level of things

that have to be either held onto,

like Compper heads of schools in my

view, or they have to be advanced,

like the NHS, are very great.

I think that this was a lovely

country, when it was a social

democratic country, and I think

for a long time, I will say

this in respect of both

John Major and Ted Heath,

that they were both very clearly

moderate Conservatives.

Well, here's what John

Major says today.

And he speaks out in

the most powerful terms,

not least about Europe.

So the funny thing about today's

Conservative Party is it's as split

as Labour's party was back in 1981,

between different groups

within the party, all of whom would

see themselves as loyal to that

party, but they can't be,

because it cannot possibly

comprehend such a huge range

of views and call them

all members of the same party.

We've had an interesting

time, to say the least,

this last 20 years.

We've had the New Labour years,

we've had coalition

under David Cameron.

Now we're back to a Conservative

government, though in very

different circumstances.

Where does that leave

social democracy?

I mean, you look at what's happened

and you look at what's happened

with the vote to leave

the European Union, the election

of Donald Trump in America,

the rise of populism.

Do social democrats have the answers

to the questions that

people have been asking?

They have.

It takes time for it

to sink through.

Let's take two examples.

Donald Trump's already in so much

trouble, not least...

I mean, what's going to be key about

that is what Congress discovers

about the relationships with Russia.

If they're as close as it looks

as though it may be,

then I frankly cannot see

what future Trump has.

It's an extraordinary situation

for the leader of the second biggest

democracy in the world to find

himself arguing for a much closer

relationship with one of the past

enemies of that country,

and no decent relationship

at all with the other - China -

where he made it clear

that he doesn't accept the idea

of a One China policy.

So he's clearly a man who is,

I think, very much at a loss.

And then he looks to the social

media to rescue him.

And of course you can't

have the social media

rescue elected leaders

of great democracies

for a straightforward reason.

Social media are the most easily

hammered, mistreated system

of communication that exists.

So his dependence on Trump's

triumphs, so to speak,

in the area of social media really

raise the whole question of

whether social media and democracy

are a convulation together.

I think we have to make them so.

I think we have to take steps to do

something about that.

But I think the only people likely

to make such steps are people who do

believe basically in equality,

basically in equality

of opportunity.

And, in the end, something

which is much fairer in economic

terms than what we have in Britain

today, which is becoming

increasingly and quite rapidly

more and more unequal.

The other big cause you're

talking about the whole way

through is Europe and we had

the European referendum

and people voted to leave.

They also got fed the most amazing

diet of misrepresentation.

I taught for 10 years in Harvard

the story of the European Union.

All right, it's mixed.

I mean, I will readily

say it's mixed.

I don't think Mr Juncker is so easy

to understand in Britain.

I also think that there's a really

serious need for greater democracy.

It's easy to bring about, by the by.

You only have to say that every

commissioner should be

elected, but we don't.

We've never tried to

do that in Britain.

We're to blame, to some

extent, for not having

democratised the union.

It's now possible to do that.

And I think we could change it

really quickly because I think

there's a lot of support in Holland

and Scandinavia and so on for it.

Let me just add one other thing.

Most of my life, I've been involved

in international affairs,

whether it's Russia or India

or whatever it is,

all over the world.

I'm deeply scared now

about what might happen.

I hope I've proved to you I'm

not a scary person.

But when I see, for example,

the fear in the Baltics of a gradual

Russian intrusion, ending up with it

trying to, in effect,

half-colonise them.

When I see in the Balkans,

the situation of Greece,

because I don't think

that we thought through the European

zone sensibly enough.

And when, finally, I look at what's

happening in, for example,

Japan's fear about what North Korea

might do if it begins to come

within its own sphere.

We talk so much in Europe,

but we don't talk enough

about the rest of the world,

and we are now looking at some

extremely frightening situations.

And I weep for the fact

that the United Kingdom,

which I believe is a country

which has had a remarkable past

as a global country,

with a remarkable sense

of where we're all going,

should now have done what it's done.

And to do that in the teeth

of the attitude of almost

not all, but the great majority

of people under the age of 35,

having been effectively sold down

the galley by elderly people

like me, in their sort

of 60s and 70s and 80s.

Then I have to say that I think,

as my grandson said to me very

forcefully, he said,

Grandma, your generation

has betrayed mine,

and I completely agree with him.

Young people cannot understand

what Europe was all about and would

like to see it more democratic,

would like to see it more open.

But they haven't been listened

to and we have therefore taken

a decision which 48% of people

voted in favour.

52% against.

But if you break it down into age

groups, overwhelmingly most

of the young voted to stay in Europe

and mostly older to get out.

That says an awful lot

about what's wrong with us.

But doesn't it all combine

to create a crisis for social

democrats like you?

It's a crisis for everybody.

It's a crisis for the people

of Britain because what has stopped

looking as though it's

an international country is not me.

Or David Owen or whatever.

It's effectively, we have

let ourselves be led,

partly by a heavily biased

study and campaign.

We've let ourselves be

led by the interests and purposes

of older people, and interests

is a key word here.

And we've taken very little notice

of the thousands of young people

for whom the future is the future

we've created, we the older

have created for them.

And that most of them,

evidently from the vote,

don't like and don't

want to be part of.

You've talked throughout our

conversation about education

in one form or another.

Is that the legacy you're most

proud of, do you think?

Your time as Education Secretary

and your championing

of comprehensive education?

I'm proud of comprehensive schools,

and although people

who watch won't all agree with this.

Almost all the speeches I make

throughout the country

are followed by people who went

to comprehensive schools

and come up to me and say,

I just want to let you know that

I am the chairman of this business

company, or I am one of the people

who have directed a theatre

or whatever it may be.

There's a lot of feeling among

people who went to comprehensive

schools that they got

the break they needed.

People forget all the time that

when we had grammar schools,

I'm not saying they weren't good,

they were in their way.

But they only served about 10%

of the population and the rest

were sent to secondary modern

schools, where they couldn't even

get a sixth form education.

Luckily now they are coming through.

But if we go back to grammar

schools, the schools may be good

but there would be very

few of them all.

And I think the final

point I want to make

about education is that you have

to educate your population

for the world that's coming.

The world that's coming will be one

that will demand high

technology understanding,

high understanding of a numerate

country and all the rest of it.

That's why you have

to have an education that serves

almost all the people,

not even the very carefully

chosen small minority,

which is never going to be enough

for a modern country.

If we could get the young

Shirley Williams, who's just been

for an audition to National Velvet,

and bring her into the studio,

what piece of advice

would you give her?

It all takes longer than you think.

It requires you to learn to not

only speak to people

but to listen to them.

Leadership is participation now.

It used to be command.

No longer so.

And that whether you like it or not,

you live in a global world.

And so what happens in India

or Kenya matters as much

to you and your friends and,

above all, your children

and grandchildren as what you know

about Bournemouth or what you now

about Newcastle.

Shirley Williams,

thank you very much.