Lord Ashdown Fern Britton Meets...

My guest today was born in colonial India,

into a military family.

He started his career as a Royal Marines officer.

Yet most of his life has been spent serving his country

in the full glare of publicity, as a leading figure in British politics.

He is Paddy Ashdown.

As a young man, Paddy served in conflicts all around the world.

We get on board HMS Bulwark and thunder up the Persian Gulf,

every rivet of the ship popping.

He patrolled the jungles of Sarawak in Borneo.

I didn't like the business of killing, obviously,

nobody likes that.

And undertook secret missions in the naval special forces.

For a time, he even stepped into the shadowy world of espionage.

I can say I was working in the area of intelligence - yes.

But life in the military in charge of other young Marines opened

Paddy's eyes.

I was in a position of commanding them because of an accident

of birth, and I detest the class system, utterly detest it.

He developed a new passion,

swapping the theatre of war for the political stage.

He was not a natural Parliamentarian.

He didn't enjoy the silly games they play between the Honourable

and the Right Honourable members.

And there was one particular Right Honourable who regularly

outplayed him.

Every week, I'd try and pop up and she'd go...pom, pom!

As leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown has experienced

the highs

and the lows of political life.

If this exit poll is right, I will publicly eat my hat.

And survived a scandal that threatened to destroy his career

and his marriage.

Jane deserves a medal for almost everything.

I don't suppose I've been an easy person to live with at all.

Everyone knows about the kind of menace and machismo

of the man.

Gallantry, glamour, youth.

But in many respects, a better description of him

is as a soldier poet.

There was an old man burying his son and Paddy immediately

took his jacket off, picked up a shovel and helped him.

But despite a lifetime witnessing the horror of war,

he retains a belief in God.

I love to feel part of the communion of people who are in touch

with the God that I believe in, actually, pray to every night.

But where does the soldier end and the politician begin?

I want to know who's the real Paddy Ashdown?

INAUDIBLE

-Of course, we've just had the general election this year.

-Yeah.

Everybody was taken by surprise.

And I ate my hat.

You did.

Yeah, I looked at those figures, Fern, because

I saw them about two minutes before they were announced, and I thought,

"Oh, God, um, what do I do now?"

And so I used the famous phrase.

I get lorry drivers in the street still pulling up alongside,

"Hey, Paddy, you eaten your hat yet?"

You weren't born Patrick or Paddy, were you?

No. I wasn't, no.

At the age of 11, I went to my school in England with...

-WITH ACCENT:

-..a very broad Northern Ireland accent - very, very broad.

So, of course, the English,

knowing nothing about the Irish whatsoever, decided

that all Irish must be Paddys.

And Paddy I was known,

and I feel rather more of a Paddy than I do a Jeremy.

You are a Jeremy John...

..Durham Ashdown.

Jeremy John Durham Ashdown was born in the middle of World War II

on 27 February 1941, in New Delhi, India.

So, Paddy, why were you born in India? What were your parents doing?

My dad's family came originally from the south of Ireland

and went to India in 1805.

They were soldiers and administrators and the people

who ran the Empire, and my mum came from Northern Ireland

and she went to India as a nurse, just before the war, in the 1930s.

During his childhood in India, Paddy was often

left in the care of family servants.

They were wonderful.

And they were Muslims and I was brought up to

the rhythm of Islam and when I came home at the age of five, when

the British left India, I could speak Hindi

much, much better than English.

Interesting that you say the rhythms?

Do you mean the day-to-day...

Yeah, the habits of Islam and, above all, the prayers of Islam,

so it was sort of ingrained into my life.

And it's always been a part of my life, Fern,

this business of living with different creeds,

different cultures.

I've always enjoyed it very much.

The Ashdowns had seven children in all, but Paddy shared his first

four years with just one younger brother, Richard.

As you were growing up and were still in India,

you lost a little brother, who died,

and I know that that really also shaped

something for your parents -

this fear of losing a child is obviously any parent's horror.

Yeah, I don't know how they coped with it.

They lost, in all, three.

I am the oldest of seven and my brother Richard died

when I was four - he was two -

of one of those tropical fevers nobody could perfectly identify.

And then my younger brother Robert, at the age of 14.

He died of leukaemia.

And then my youngest twin sister, Melanie, was

killed in a traffic accident.

I sometimes think, in a way that you do, that my luck has been

bought at the price of the torture my parents went through.

And this business of losing offspring, it is

the biggest nightmare I have.

Whenever the kids got sick, indeed when they still do,

I almost lose my rationality about this tiny dot that

appears on the horizon, that is suddenly going to become

the storm that engulfs you in tragedy and sadness.

After the war ended, the Ashdowns decided to leave India

and begin a new life in their native Ireland.

Aged just five,

Paddy made the long journey with his mother.

It was from their train that he witnessed sectarian violence

for the first time.

-ARCHIVE:

-Can Hindus and Muslims live peacefully together?

The train stopped outside a station.

My mum put my face into her skirts but, being a five-year-old,

I looked out and what I saw

was a platform covered with the bodies of the end of a massacre.

I don't know whether they were Muslims by Hindus or Hindus by Muslims.

But I could almost smell the fear.

And so, as a sort of underground stream

in my life has run this business of that terrible event

that occurs between two neighbours that get on perfectly well and

one terrible night something happens that ignites the ethnic or religious

differences, and then they are able to kill and torture each other

in the most disgusting ways,

-and that seems to have been part of my life.

-It does.

But as a five-year-old, that was not established in your consciousness.

No, absolutely not, but it did give me terrible nightmares.

And when you finally, safely, got on the boat,

it was the sea that ignited your passion?

Absolutely right. I had never seen it before, of course,

and I immediately fell in love with it

and teamed up with another tearaway five-year-old.

And we both swore we'd go in the Royal Navy.

After a couple of years living on the Northern Irish coast, the family

moved inland to the little market town of Comber in County Down.

It took another year or so

for your father to join you all in Northern Ireland.

How did he settle without the glamour of India and the Army?

I don't think that mattered to him.

I could always sense a nostalgia for India, but my dad was the kind

of person who looked objectively at the task in front of him.

And the task in front of him was to make a base in Northern Ireland,

to earn a living for his family.

He took on pig farming?

He had to learn it from scratch and he wasn't very good at it, in truth.

But he clearly was devastatingly charming -

seven engagements before he managed to marry your mother.

Yes, he was a rogue.

He loved argument, adored it. He would provoke it.

He would stimulate arguments and then take the impossible side

so you had to argue with him, even though he didn't believe in it.

We used to shout at each other.

I mean, it was an extremely turbulent dinner table, with

my mum presiding over all of it like this calm centre to the storm,

always dishing out clotted cream dollops of unconditional love

to any hurt pride.

And he taught me a very, very, very important lesson

for politics, which is never be afraid to be in a minority of one.

Don't worry if other people are all against you,

if you believe you are right, stick to it.

Paddy was growing up in a household at odds with the religious

sectarianism around him.

His mum was a Protestant, his dad a Catholic.

So, did religion play any part in your childhood?

When I went to school, at the age of five,

to a little Northern Ireland primary school,

all of them said, "What are you Paddy,

"are youse a Protestant or are youse a Catholic?"

So I went home to my father and said,

"Dad, am I a Protestant or a Catholic?"

And he said, "Go back and tell them you're a Muslim."

So, I went back and I said, "I'm a Muslim,"

and they said, "Well are youse a Protestant Muslim or are youse a Catholic Muslim?"

HE LAUGHS

These early experiences helped shape Paddy's religious thinking.

If somebody asked me, Fern, do I believe in God, I do, actually.

If they ask me how shall we name the creed,

I'd say Christianity, because Christianity happens

to provide me with a code to try and live my life at my time,

in my country, in the context in which I live it.

If somebody said, "You're a Christian, are you a Protestant or

a Catholic?" I say,

"Look, I'm a Christian, I'm not going further than that."

But I love to feel part of the communion of people who are

in touch with the God that I believe in, actually, pray to every night

Every night?

Yeah, I do, I do, I do. I don't know, but.... I do, yes.

Are you asking for things, thanking him for things,

looking for something?

I have been exceptionally fortunate.

I have to say at moments of misery and sadness,

I will ask for things, but that is rather rare. I just

find it a comfortable thing to do in my life, to acknowledge something

greater than myself on a daily basis,

I suppose it's as easy as that.

At the age of 11,

Paddy was sent away to England as a boarder at Bedford School.

Academic study didn't interest him.

He shone most on the playing fields and in the pool.

He left before taking his A levels,

pursuing instead his earlier passion for the sea.

I mean, I could have gone to university.

People said I should have done.

I could have passed the exams.

I never took them because my parents couldn't afford to send me

to university.

So I joined the Royal Marines by accident.

It was absolutely right for this 18-year-old tearaway

with a love of adventure.

When the Marine has to go in somewhere,

there's no telling how he'll arrive,

by air, by water, or on foot.

Royal Marines training is regarded as one of the toughest in the world.

For a Marine, cliffs, even sheer cliffs with hardly a foothold,

just don't exist.

It culminates in the infamous 30-mile speed march across Dartmoor.

As a young, raw second lieutenant, I had to learn to pack my kit.

I had to learn to, um, to make sure

we had the right number of pieces of lavatory paper in there.

How many pieces? Three?

Yes, I remember I had a drill sergeant who said,

"You've got four pieces of lavatory paper here, sir.

"That's not what your young bottom needs.

"Three is enough - one up, one down and one to polish," he said.

So that was all part of it.

But the most important thing it taught me was the self-discipline.

You can do your 30-mile march across Dartmoor with a full pack

and rifle in whatever it was, five or six hours, not

because of discipline but because of self-discipline that drives you on.

That's what it taught me, and then, that unique

privilege of commanding men in difficult circumstances.

Paddy's best friend on the course was fellow officer Tim Courtenay.

Training was hard, but it's all to do with moulding young men

into good Royal Marines.

Paddy led by example.

He wouldn't expect his marines or anyone to do things that he couldn't

do and do better, so he was a good, positive leader.

I had two reports written of me.

One by a colonel who said, "Lieutenant Ashdown's men

"would follow him anywhere, but chiefly out of curiosity."

Never knew what you were going to do next!

Well, one of those things you did next was you went to a ball, I think,

and you met a gorgeous young woman called Jane.

It was my first ball, I was 18, first Royal Marine Ball,

I think my first ball, to be honest.

For some reason or another, Paddy

and other members of the batch were without birds, to put it bluntly,

and so it was, "Does anyone know any spare birds?"

I took my cousin and my best friend took his cousin.

It just so happened that my cousin Jane lived up the road.

So it was a question of, you know, come down to the pub,

meet up and see who is going to take who.

And it was a slightly haphazard sort of way of doing things.

So when I arrived at a little pub,

I asked the publican, who I knew quite well, and he said,

"Upstairs, second on the right."

So I went upstairs, second on the right, opened the door

and there was Jane. She was not dressed at the time and I went, "Oh!" she went, "Oh!"

And there was I in my dressing gown with my hair in pins, you know?

I looked at him and I thought, "Oh, where have you been all my life?"

I was a nasty, scruffy little art student in Bristol

and he was all tarted up, you know, looking frightfully chic.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The next day, we went to lunch at the Clarence Hotel in Exeter.

Neither of us really enjoyed the lunch very much,

so I said to her, "Do you know what? Let's go and look at the cathedral."

And that's when we fell in love.

Here was a person who, she was not only very beautiful,

but also she had the same passions as I did, poetry,

music, in particular, classical music, and architecture.

By the way, very different to me,

completely opposite, and that's the secret of our marriage.

Almost in the same way that your mother

and father were quite different. Your mother, the centre balm.

Fern, that's very perceptive.

Jane is in our family the calm centre,

Jane is the person who anchors me.

I am the person who is constantly looking for another adventure.

But that Christmas was bittersweet.

Days after meeting Jane, Paddy returned home to

Northern Ireland to discover his parents' business had collapsed.

And his father had a shocking announcement.

I remember the meeting so well.

I was in tears and he was, too, which made me even worse,

and he said, "Look I've let you all down.

"I must now go somewhere with the family where the future

"of my children does not depend on them going to a private school."

I said goodbye to them not far

from here and they all emigrated to Australia as £10 Poms, and left me behind.

Good heavens.

Paddy said goodbye to his parents

and his five siblings in the summer of 1960.

He was 19 years old.

I know he found losing his family to the other

side of the world pretty difficult, but we didn't have

a lot of time to think about these things, so we got on with it.

Just 1,000 miles east of Suez,

British units are rushed in at the Sheikh of Kuwait's request...

Paddy's first deployment was to the Middle East.

His unit was part of a naval task force sent to defend

Kuwait against invasion by Iraq.

As far as we knew, we were going to do an assault with 600 men

on Kuwait, which we thought was occupied by a division -

that's 10,000 - Iraqis, plus tanks.

So we were all a bit nervous about this and we get

onboard HMS Bulwark, and thunder up the Persian Gulf.

Every rivet of the ship popping.

And my commanding officer was a completely mad wartime

Commando colonel, and he called us young officers together.

And he said, "Right, when we have driven these Arab Johnnies..."

- that's the way they talk -

"When we have driven these Arab Johnnies out of Kuwait,

"we will have to win their hearts and minds,

"and so we'll put on a show of Scottish country dancing."

I jest not - so here I am in an army blanket as a kilt... I don't know,

about 70 degrees outside, with the sunshine sparkling off the Arabian Sea,

learning the Eightsome Reel, which I can still do to this day.

When we got there, the Iraqis hadn't arrived

so we were able to take up our position.

And the Iraqis got to hear that there was a thin red line

and they didn't attack, so we saved Kuwait, sort of.

Yes, you did save Kuwait. 600 against 10,000 would have been grim.

I am so glad they didn't come.

Paddy didn't see action in Kuwait,

but his next operation took him to Borneo in the Far East

and a confrontation over the creation of modern Malaysia.

It meant Paddy and his men defending a frontier of dense jungle

and months of separation from Jane.

I went to the cinema one night with my mother, I think it was,

and, you know, they used to have these Look At Life clip things.

And there was I sitting there

and there was my husband on the cinema.

Britain's Marines are protecting 80 miles of Sarawak's 600-mile frontier.

At this post, 23-year-old Marine Lieutenant Ashdown has local forces

as well as Marines under his command.

I felt a bit tearful, because it was so very, very unexpected.

This is obviously a very naive question

and one I am sure you have been asked a million times

at dinner parties etc, but that moment when, I mean I am

imagining this, you are perhaps on your stomach, you are crouching in

long grass, the enemy is over there,

you squeeze the trigger, you know you've killed them.

You know, Fern, it doesn't...

I can't remember it happening like that.

It's just... 99% of war is just unbearable boredom

and then 1% is stuff that happens in,

you know, a minute, 30 seconds, three or four minutes,

maybe, quarter of an hour.

Of terror.

Well, you are, of course you're frightened.

If you're not frightened, you're an idiot.

But when the moment comes,

and stuff starts flying, you don't have time to be frightened,

oddly enough, you just don't.

You want to know your men are all right.

People have this weird idea that young men fight wars

for their country. They don't.

They fight wars for the man next to them,

who they know is their buddy and they know

he will lay down his life for you and you will do the same for him.

I think... I enjoyed soldiering.

I didn't like the business of killing, obviously,

nobody likes that.

Also, I have to confess that, after a lot of this,

I became...a bit put off

by the sort of use of maximum force,

and I became fascinated by the soldiering of guile.

And so, in 1964, Paddy put himself forward for the naval

equivalent of the SAS - the elite Special Boat Section,

which specialises in secret operations behind enemy lines.

The standards set are very high and very demanding

and not for the faint-hearted.

You've got to be exceptional to get into Special Boat Section.

Only 30% get through the gruelling selection process.

I was one of his sergeants when he joined.

Part of it was the parachute jump

and I always remember Paddy looking very apprehensive

and that's the only time I have ever seen him apprehensive

and I don't think, even at the end, he was actually too keen on parachuting.

Never liked parachuting, always hated parachutes, it's always

struck me as being, you know,

contrary to human nature to throw yourself

out of an aircraft at 1,000 foot, with a perfectly serviceable aircraft,

but I did like the diving.

I am not fazed at all by being in inky blackness

under 30,000 tonnes of warship on a dark night.

I am not fazed by the claustrophobia.

Their mission accomplished, the frogmen have to get away, but quick.

Of course, there are probably quite a lot of one-armed Marines going about these days.

But working in the Special Boat Section wasn't

all about physical strength and courage.

You were trained in how to cope with interrogation

if you were caught so, therefore, they had to put you through

the kind of things, the kind of torture,

-that an enemy would put you through.

-Well, in those days,

the main element that you used for interrogation is sleeplessness,

sleep deprivation, and it's quite difficult.

But my interrogator, who I used to meet every year,

he said to me once, "You know, Paddy, you won't

"be broken by physical hardship, but I know how I'd break you.

"I'd stick you in a cell and make you do nothing for three days."

And the truth is he's right, because having to sit down

and do nothing, it's one of the reasons I can't retire.

-It frightens me to death.

-So you'd come out screaming, "I'll tell you everything"

"I'll tell you everything! I'll tell you everything! Give me something to do!"

Did the SBS shape your politics?

Enormously. I was first Labour.

Well, we're all entitled to the follies of youth.

In the SBS I found myself, Fern, commanding young men,

who were, by any standard,

better at the profession we were all involved in than I was.

And I was in a position of commanding them because of

an accident of birth, and I detest the class system, utterly detest it.

He had the idea that everyone could do anything they want to do.

I had no qualification, never thought of being an officer,

and Paddy said, "You can do it."

I thought, "Now, what kind of country would we have if we had

"a genuine meritocracy, if you genuinely got on according to your ability?"

He persisted and persisted and persisted

and without that I wouldn't have got commissioned.

I think that sense of comradeship, of common destiny and,

above all, believing in each other's ability is, in a sense, what shaped

the set of political beliefs that eventually, not at the time,

became liberalism.

The other thing I have to thank Paddy for is a very gammy right leg.

He injured me playing rugby and it's never been the same since.

In 1969, Paddy was back in the Far East.

But this time as a student.

During his military service,

he'd discovered a love for languages and so took the unusual step

of a three-year sabbatical to learn Chinese.

Jane and their two young children joined him.

You went to Hong Kong. You started to learn Chinese.

How many languages do you speak now?

I have forgotten six.

You have forgotten six.

How many do you remember?

If you don't use a language you forget it, but I have

learnt or tried to learn Malay and then Dayak,

when I was up deep in the jungles of Borneo,

because those are the people we lived among.

They were still head-hunters, so it wasn't a bad idea to

learn their language. Wasn't a very difficult language.

Then I came back and tried to learn German, but I can't do it at the same depth as I used to.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

When it comes to languages, there's another politician who can

compete with Paddy - ex Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

In terms of the number of languages, I think

I can probably run him close on that one, but in terms of impenetrable,

indecipherable and exotic languages, he's definitely got the top prize.

I just speak a few European languages.

With his student days over, Paddy returned to soldiering for

one final deployment - back home in Northern Ireland.

In 1970, he took command of one of the units

brought in to keep the peace between Belfast's divided community -

the Protestant Unionist majority and the Catholic Nationalist minority.

-Thank you.

-There you are, love.

-That's for after your lunch, for after your dinner.

-Thank you very much.

When I first went into Belfast, the Catholics welcomed us

with cups of tea and bacon butties, because we were their saviours.

And somehow or other, we lost their confidence.

SHOUTING

EXPLOSION

You decided to go and seek out the local leader of the IRA?

Oh, you've got all the secrets!

Yeah. So, one day, I left my weapons and my Marines behind.

I was still in uniform, wandered up the road, knocked on his door,

and I said, "I gather you are the IRA commander here

"and I am the British commander."

I thought it wouldn't do any harm for him to know

that I knew where he lived.

But the next day, the IRA put me on their death list

and I was given a considerable rocket

by my commanding officer for doing such a foolish thing.

I genuinely believed that, surely, there must be some way

around this problem, rather than this confrontation between ourselves

and the Catholics.

Over 30 years later, Paddy worked alongside one of the Republicans

he believed had put him on the death list back in 1970.

So when I went back to Belfast, I said to him,

"If I'd have seen you here 30 years ago, I'd have arrested you."

He said, "Not if I'd have seen you coming first or I'd have shot you!"

BOTH LAUGH

He's a really lovely man.

-Now that the violence is over.

-Well, he probably was then.

He was a man prepared to take risks with his life for the things

he believed in. I can't disagree.

I may disagree with the methods which they got up to, particularly some of the more violent ones,

but if I'd have been brought up in Belfast,

as a Catholic, in the Ardoyne, given my nature,

I wouldn't be surprised if I'd ended up a member of the IRA, too.

What a... What a confession.

No, you know, you are the product of your upbringing.

I hope that, you know, some of the terrible pieces of terrorism

you would have resisted, but would I have been a supporter of those

who, in the end, felt they had to take more strenuous action?

Given my nature, I probably would have been.

There is no question about that.

During his time serving in Belfast, Paddy once again saw how

religion could cause hatred.

Yet, he did have an experience that gave him a sense of the divine.

You went off training on an exercise in Scotland

and you said you had what you describe as a religious experience.

I've had two.

I suppose we all have them and I suppose it's not unusual.

We were... I had taken my company up to Arran island

and we had moved up onto the summit of Goat Fell.

It was one of those bitterly, bitterly cold nights.

The moon was shining crisp, clear, frosty night, still,

traces of snow still around on the top of the mountain.

And I looked down and the whole of the Firth of Clyde was laid out

down below me.

And it was a moment of just extraordinary exhilaration.

And I just... I remember saying...

It was a quasi-religious experience, maybe it was a religious experience.

I just felt, you know, there has to be something more than this

and if that helps you to lead your life a little bit better,

surely that's a good thing.

Back home in Somerset, Paddy had another moment of epiphany,

this time in his political beliefs.

Tell me about your conversion to liberalism.

Well, I suspect the conversion actually occurred many years

before and this was a little pile of tinder ready to be lit.

So, here I am, and a knock on the door.

So I go and open it, and this man, he was wearing an anorak.

He certainly had sandals, and he may have had a bobble hat.

And he said, "Hello, I am from the Liberals."

And I said, "Go away." I thought that the Liberals weren't

worth considering because they were this tiny thing that didn't

matter, and I can't imagine why, but I said,

"I tell you what, I'll give you my vote if you can persuade me to be a Liberal. Come in, sit down."

I think just about there.

Two hours later, I had discovered from this unlikely

angel of fate, that I had, in fact, been a Liberal all my life.

And I've tried to find him since locally and I can't.

And quite literally, I took down liberalism like an old coat

hanging in the cupboard, ready for me to choose it

and it felt comfortable then and it's felt comfortable ever since.

When Paddy cast his first vote for the Liberal Party,

it was by proxy from Geneva in Switzerland.

It was the beginning of 1974.

He'd left the Army for a new career with the Foreign Office

that appeared to be nothing more than a desk job.

You went to Geneva on a job with the Civil Service, and I can say

the word but you are going to find it difficult - you were a spy.

I am allowed to say, and I will not say more,

because I promised I wouldn't, the undertaking I took,

I can say I was working in the area of intelligence - yes.

I don't think a spy - that's a bit overdramatic.

But I like it. It's romantic.

Well, it was an extraordinary, it was an extraordinary

part of our lives, Jane was very much part of it, too.

My other job was being a diplomat, that was what I was supposed to be.

Your "day job" was diplomat.

My day job was a diplomat, erm, it was the era when the Cold War,

the Cold War intelligence war was still in place.

Occasionally, you and Jane would go somewhere where you needed to be

on the pretext that, "Oh, we are just travelling and we're coming to see the opera..."

You are very naughty, Fern, I'm not going to tell you anything about that.

There was an occasion when we had a fascinating trip

to a western capital on the grounds

that we were taking a holiday, which included seeing opera,

as you rightly say, but more than that it would be improper for me to say.

Was it mission accomplished?

-That would be improper, too.

-Damn you!

I have to eat you if I say that.

I'm going to put you in a room for three days and then you'll tell me.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

Paddy might have stayed on in Geneva working anonymously

in the service of his country, but there were two reasons why he began

to rethink his future.

One was his recent conversion to liberalism,

the other was the political situation back home in Britain.

There we were living in Geneva, living the life of Riley,

and everybody back at home was having a pretty tough time

and things were pretty hard.

Britain in 1974 was a country in crisis marked by

rampant inflation, industrial unrest and power cuts.

I remember coming home from school

and my mother would have the candles ready and make up some food,

-because you wouldn't be able to heat it in the oven and...

-Yes.

All of those things. But what shocked me

was we really seriously discussed who was running Britain - was

it the elected government of the day or was it the trades union movement?

And, you know, I just could not bear the idea that the country that

I loved was in such a terrible state

and so I took what was, with Jane's agreement,

the most irresponsible, stupid, irrational decision of my life.

He said to me,

"I think I want to go into politics."

# I'm going to change the world, baby

# I'm going to change the world

# I'll switch the wrong to right

# You can bet your life... #

Paddy set his sights on becoming a Parliamentary candidate

for Jane's home constituency of Yeovil in Somerset.

I was absolutely 100% behind him,

although I'm a bit more left-wing than Paddy is.

Of course, he had to persuade the local Liberal Party

selection committee that he was the right man for the job.

He gave us this incredibly rousing speech.

And then we all stood up and said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah,

"we must have this guy."

And I went home and I said to my husband,

"Some of those people there have no idea what they have taken on

"and things will never be the same with this guy."

The Yeovil campaign was mission impossible, nationally and locally.

The Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe had recently resigned amidst

a scandal that involved sex and murder.

And Yeovil was a seat the Liberals had almost no chance of winning.

We were third in the previous election.

The Tories had been in power since 1910.

They did not count their majorities,

they weighed them, and I said, sort of gleefully,

"I am going to be a Member of Parliament for Yeovil."

I thought I was such a remarkable, wonderful person

that the idea that I wouldn't be elected just

never occurred to me.

I recognised I might have to open a strawberry cream tea or two

but people would want me as their MP.

Good evening to you.

The first time I stood in '79, when I lost, um -

my father was alive then, he was sitting here when I got back -

that was pretty devastating, actually.

He had worked really, really hard

and that's probably the only time I've known him to be ill.

Um, and he really was quite down for three or four weeks.

It was just...horrendous, really.

The only thing was that we had come second.

Which was a big...better than coming third.

And then he grabbed us all by the scruff of the necks and said,

"Right, come on, we're going to carry on with this."

The next four years were tough for Paddy, Jane and the children.

Paddy's father died and, for a while, he was unemployed.

Polling Day on 9th June 1983 was the last throw of the dice.

Paddy and I tootled in our awful broken-down little red Renault 5

over the hill into Yeovil and he said,

"You know, if we don't do it this time, we can't go on.

"We really can't sustain this

"and I can't put the kids through this anymore."

And so it was make or break.

Paddy is not great on Election Day, cos he can be quite

a prophet of doom, especially when the stakes are very high.

He would prowl around like a caged lion.

Being miserable and saying, "Oh, God, look,

"they're not voting for me and I'm going to lose."

"It's all going dreadfully, The people are not coming out."

He used to get up everybody's noses.

We have, at stages, had to say to him, "Go and do something else."

Every ballot paper, cos you can see them as they are being

counted, that hasn't got a cross against your name, is a personal

arrow in your heart. Maybe I just take it, maybe I've got a thin skin.

But that night, my agent came to me

and said, "Paddy, I think we've done it."

Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Liberal Alliance candidate,

26,608.

And that night was just euphoric. It was just amazing.

We hardly believed it and the children were delighted.

Of course, we all had a good cry, all four of us, I think,

and, erm, well, we'd done it.

Let's see that result from Yeovil, the first Liberal gain of the night.

By a hefty majority - 3,400.

If somebody said to me, "We're going to have put one

"line on your tombstone, what is it that you are most proud of?"

I have absolutely no doubt, the thing I am most proud of is being

Member Of Parliament for the constituency that I live in and love.

So that irresponsible decision was also the best decision of my life.

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

Within just five years of becoming an MP, Paddy Ashdown became

leader of his party.

What is Paddy Ashdown going to do? Five years?

I mean, after five years, I hardly knew my way around the place

and there are colleagues who feel the same as I do.

You got elected and then in 1988 you became leader.

Yeah, yeah. Mind you, the party was a bit of a wreck then.

It was ramshackle and virtually bankrupt.

Three hours before I was elected, announced I was elected as the leader

of the Liberal Democrats, the tax officials had been round to

close down the organisation because we hadn't paid our taxes.

We were within the margin of error of nothing in the opinion polls.

I think I am the only party leader who has presided over

a political party represented by an asterix in the opinion poll,

denoting that no detectable support could be found for us anywhere in the land.

OK, OK, order, order, order... Thank you. A little bit of quiet, please.

And in those first years, as we were trying to

build the party up, I used to have nightmares

that scared me to death.

Because my nightmare was very simple. You know, would

the party of the great William Ewart Gladstone end with Paddy Ashdown?

And it looked to me as though it might.

The chap at the back with the dark brown hair.

Oh, me. Er, could you tell me the way to Oldthorpe Avenue, please?

Typical, there's always one, isn't there?

Paddy took the party at a time

when it was perilously close to extinction,

you know, even more perilously close to the edge than

we are even now, after the election result we had this year.

And he took it by the scruff of the neck and singlehandedly,

through force of personality, through energy,

through commitment, picked the party up

and turned it into the party that eventually entered into government

in the 2010 general election.

# Don't believe the stories We can beat the Tories

# We're the toughest gang in town... #

Paddy sees everything as a sort of Marine battle.

Indeed, in advance of a general election campaign,

he would talk about air battles and ground battles.

# In the Lib Dems

# You can do just what you please... #

When the going got tough, he didn't duck.

You have to be stubborn if you're going to be a successful leader. You have to stick to your guns.

You may think the Liberal Party is just a party that wins

by-elections and little else. Well, we're partly that, but we're a lot more...

When Paddy comes on talking about politics, I tend to turn it off.

Where are you going? You, you, come back here.

-John!

-There was one engagement Paddy did not relish.

That was facing a particularly formidable adversary

every Wednesday at midday.

Oh, of course.

BIG BEN CHIMES

Of course, you have to face Mrs Thatcher across

the House of Commons floor and she's doing PMQs.

Yes. She was just formidable.

I don't think there is anything I have done in my life, ANYTHING

I have done in my life, which scared me to death as much as having

to ask Mrs Thatcher at the height of her powers.

Every week, I'd try and pop up and she'd go...pom, pom!

Is she determined to remain in the past

and condemn this country to a future without friends,

without influence, and without a role in Europe in the future?

What nonsense. The Honourable Gentleman comes out with that question almost every time

like a cracked gramophone record.

She was an extraordinary woman.

Great legs, too.

Well, I hear that people found her very attractive.

-I wouldn't go that far!

-Could you see through that?

In the end, I got the hang of it, in the end.

I mean... If I... I'm very nervous when I speak, I get very, very nervous.

My voice goes up in the register a bit.

And I have a habit of sounding quite pompous.

Erm, and I know that. There was a great joke that was going

round at the time - what's on Paddy Ashdown's answer machine?

Please leave your message after the high moral tone.

But in February 1992, Paddy earned one of the most memorable

nicknames in British politics - for all the wrong reasons.

Being in Westminster, of course, is tiring, you get lonely,

and you know what I am going to ask you next. Erm, you had an affair

with your personal secretary, Tricia Howard.

And all I want to say is, what were you thinking?

What was that about?

Haven't a clue. Well, you have said it.

Look, Fern, this was how many years ago?

It's a perfectly legitimate question.

But, honestly, I have said all I need to say about that.

Don't need to say any more.

Fair enough. Uncomfortable and difficult, and one of those things.

Yeah, very, very difficult and very difficult for everybody

and, you know, I can only say what I said at the time -

an act of great stupidity, mine, not hers,

and, erm, you know, all you can do is regret the mistakes you make.

There but for the grace of God go an awful lot of people.

Yeah, but that doesn't excuse, you know, the fact that you go there,

that's the kind of excuse you make.

I think it's... Anyway, look, there we are.

Jane deserves a medal.

Jane deserves a medal for almost everything. She deserves a medal...

I don't suppose I'd be an easy person to live with at all.

-JOURNALISTS CLAMOUR

-What Paddy said stands.

Jane forgave him, and Paddy's marriage,

career and reputation survived the scandal.

I don't think this has any relevance to Mr Ashdown's policies

or his capabilities.

I don't believe it's a political issue.

Let's get on to Bosnia,

which really is the thing that you have been passionate about.

Well, I first went to Bosnia when the war broke out

and it changed my life completely.

-REPORTER:

-To avoid fire from the ground, the aircraft flew fast and low,

a taste of wartime conditions for Mr Ashdown...

The Bosnian War, which began in 1992, was

fought between the different ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia.

Entire communities were destroyed by indiscriminate shelling.

There was systematic rape and ethnic genocide.

This was, in many ways,

a World War I-style war, but in a modern setting.

And the world watched and did absolutely nothing.

Paddy Ashdown seemed to be the only MP who took enough of an interest

actually to turn up.

-BELL ON ARCHIVE REPORT:

-A single mortar round landed

15 metres in front of Mr Ashdown's vehicle, but it was as close a call as any British soldier has had.

What did you find when you first went to Bosnia?

The old plague, the old baleful plague that I had seen in

Northern Ireland, but now with much more blood and much more violence.

He was leading the party in the House of Commons

and the country, and there he was yomping all over ex-Yugoslavia.

His party thought he was bonkers to do it.

-JANE ASHDOWN:

-He was known in the House of Commons

as the Right Honourable Member for Sarajevo which, if only some of those other people had seen

what he'd seen, perhaps they would have understood why.

Paddy met the Bosnia Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic -

currently awaiting the verdict in his trial for war crimes.

In Sarajevo, there will be not a single fight...

You say that Karadzic was actually quite charming?

I went to see him and we spent a long night drinking plum brandy,

under the stars, with his wife.

Um...

I had always presumed, Fern, that you could see great evil

in a man's face.

I have to say, I couldn't, and for 24 hours,

I was actually fooled by him.

So, the presumption that evil shines out from a face, I think is

dangerous nonsense.

Paddy accepted an invitation from Karadzic to

travel behind Serbian lines.

But he refused to stick to the itinerary planned for him.

At this stage, death camps were beginning to be

exposed by some extremely brave journalists

and I knew there were two that had not yet been visited

and I demanded to go to Manjaca, which was an old army camp, and

the Serb generals said no, and they said, "If you go, we'll shoot you."

And I had the television cameras with me and I said to them,

"If you're going to shoot me, you are going to have to shoot me in front of these guys. We're going."

-REPORTER:

-After hours of diplomacy, he was allowed into Manjaca.

And that was the first television cameras that ever

got into Manjaca camp.

The camp commandant had promised Paddy Ashdown total freedom

to see whatever he wanted.

In the event, he was told time was running out.

We were able that night to top the news with pictures

of the emaciated Muslim young men and boys, lined up by the hundreds.

And how are conditions here?

Ten years later,

when Paddy was called to testify at The Hague about other crimes he'd

witnessed, he learned what happened in Manjaca camp after his visit.

I was told by one of the prosecutors in The Hague, who had spoken

to some of those men, he'd asked them, "Had you been killed?"

And he said, "Yes, we were killed until a British politician

"came along one day and brought the television cameras

"and the Red Cross arrived next day and no-one was killed after that."

That was the best day's work in my life, there is no question about it.

Paddy also visited a second camp - Trnopolje.

But what happened there, a few days after he left, was horrifying.

The Serbs arrived in the camp, took most of them away,

and they took them to the edge of a cliff

of a mountain called Vlasic Mountain

and they machine gunned them all into the ravine below.

And sometimes, Fern, I even,

I even torture myself, with the thought, which I can't disprove,

was that it was my visit there

that caused the Serbs to react in that way.

So sometimes you can take action which does good

and I think the first of those days,

probably the best day of my life,

but the second day would be

the blackest and perhaps the most shameful because of what happened

as a consequence.

And I can't get rid of a feeling of responsibility for that.

-REPORTER:

-Today, for the last time, it was Paddy Ashdown's day at a Liberal Democrat conference.

It was always Paddy's plan to bow out from the front line

of politics before he was 60.

And so he stood down from leadership of the Liberal Democrats in 1999.

And as MP for Yeovil two years later.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

and the rain fall soft upon your fields,

and until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Good luck.

In politics, people hang on too long

and it all ends in tears. Well, it didn't, and I am glad of that.

In 2001, Paddy entered the Lords as Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon.

His illustrious career was celebrated on television with

the famous Red Book.

Before you do that, let me say welcome to the BBC,

because, Paddy Ashdown, This Is Your Life.

Don't be ridiculous!

Ian, what is this nonsense?

Paddy's the worst gossip in the world

and the most indiscreet person.

And we love him for it.

But at the same time, he doesn't like secrets being kept with him.

I remember, to this day, walking off down the corridor while

Michael Aspel was leading Paddy, and Paddy's just shouting, "Ian, Ian!"

-Follow me, sir.

-Ian!

This Is Your Life was a low point in our relationship.

Flown in from Melbourne, with your sister Alison, your brother Tim.

Heavens above!

But he loved it at the end of the day, he loved seeing people

he hadn't seen for many, many years.

Paddy Ashdown, This Is Your Life.

The Red Book might well have served

as the coda to a distinguished career.

But the Prime Minister of the day, Tony Blair, had a job for Paddy

- back in Bosnia and Herzegovina - helping the country to rebuild.

HE SPEAKS THE LOCAL LANGUAGE

Blair went to the international community and said,

"Look, this guy Paddy Ashdown has run the Lib Dems for 11 years,

"so the Balkans are going to be a doddle."

-MARTIN BELL ON ARCHIVE:

-Paddy Ashdown, the High Representative,

is the most powerful man in Bosnia,

more powerful than any colonial governor.

In the dual role of UN High Representative

and EU Special Representative, Paddy finally had substantial power.

I describe this job as having a title out of Gilbert and Sullivan,

and powers that would make a liberal blush.

He'd been the leader of the party,

but he'd never had a chance of doing what he did in Bosnia.

So, really, if you think about it, those four years

were the culmination of everything

he'd worked for previously.

And he was the only High Representative who really

made an impact.

There are many stories during his time in Bosnia, as you can imagine,

but everything he did, he did through the prism of making life better for the people of Bosnia.

It can be frustrating, knackering, er, tiring,

but it is just a great job to have, a privilege to do it.

One of his great tasks there and one of the great victories that he had

was creating a cemetery for the people of Srebrenica

killed in the massacre of '95.

It was in July 1995 that units of the Bosnian Serb Army murdered more

than 8,000 men and boys, Bosnian Muslims from the town of Srebrenica.

You were there when the proper graveyard

to put the remains of these poor people, who had lost...

Yeah. We raised about five or six million euros.

I passed the laws that enabled it to happen

and together with the mothers of Srebrenica, we designed that graveyard.

If you want a place to remember why you should not

stand aside and do nothing in the face of genocide and great evil,

go there.

You will see 8,000 tombstones standing in the sun

and you'll come away without any doubt about that conclusion.

And I'm very proud of that.

And on the day it was opened,

I remember at the very end of the ceremony,

there was an old man burying his son,

as the women of the family stood round and watched.

Paddy immediately took his jacket off,

picked up a shovel, and helped them bury their son.

And I think that symbolises Paddy.

People think of him as a man of action,

but he is also a man of great compassion and kindness, as well.

When people think of Paddy Ashdown, they smile.

He is a positive force and he... he makes people feel

good about themselves, as much as anything else.

I think he was one of those politicians who actually did

command respect and deserve it.

He's a very funny person. He makes you giggle.

He's got a wonderful sense of humour, which I can't live without.

And despite a lifetime witnessing the horror of war,

he retains a sense of the divine.

There is a great poem written by a man called Rabindranath Tagore,

and he wrote a poem called The Celebration Of Diversity,

which is a model for me.

Erm, and it goes,

"We are all the more one because we are many

"For we have left an ample space for love in the gap where we were sundered,

"Our unlikeness shines with the radiance of a common creation,

"Like mountain peaks in the morning sun."

And I have to say that the unlikeness,

the multifarious differences of humanity are, to me, the greatest

revelation of the divine, whatever divine you happen to believe in,

and of our humanity and that, to me, is a sort of guiding creed, I think.

So, Paddy, what does Christmas mean to you and the family?

I adore Christmas.

Are you good at buying the presents and wrapping?

No, wrapping... I can buy an occasional present and sometimes get it right.

I am far too impatient to wrap things, so, no, you can tell sort of...

Crumpled up, everything wrapped up with Sellotape,

everybody knows my presents straight off from the outside.

And what is your Christmas Day like, do you have a routine, a tradition?

When I was an MP, we used to get up and we would always go off to

-the unemployed, you know, the drop-in, the refuges...

-Soup kitchen, yeah.

Nowadays, I don't have that duty, so we tend to be slightly more

selfish and indulgent.

We go to church and I get great pleasure out of that.

I adore our local church here, it's one of the jewels

of Somerset, it was once called.

Then we have a very late lunch,

like most others, and then I have been known to go to sleep.

-Paddy, I wish you a very happy Christmas

-And you.

Thanks for having me on the programme.

Well, I set out wanting to find out where the soldier finished

and the politician started.

But I think perhaps the politician started in the soldier

and the soldier finished up in the politician.

And maybe, who knows, Paddy Ashdown might have been the greatest

prime minister this country never had.

-Paddy.

-Yes.

-Could you call the dog, love?

Next week, I'm meeting Baroness Brady.

She's hard, she's tough. Please welcome Karren Brady.

From running a football club in her early twenties...

And he used to go, "What are your vital statistics?"

I thought, "Here we go."

..to advising Lord Sugar.

Can I just say something?

It is outrageous the way you're behaving.

Karren Brady talks about balancing faith, family and career.

And reveals her worst Christmas present ever.

My husband bought me a frying pan.

He nearly got it over his head!