MACS meets Lord Blunkett – Episode 2: Political Life

The transcript of the interview is available below.

[Intro music] 

[Voice over] Hello and welcome to the second of our three podcasts in which aspiring journalist 

and young MACS adult, Abbie, interviews Lord David Blunkett. In this episode, Abbie asks 

Lord Blunkett about his political career, how he got started, what he's most proud of and what advice he'd give to budding politicians. Lord Blunkett also shares what he and Tony Blair talk about over coffee and what he really thinks about Donald Trump! 

[Abbie, interviewer]: My name's Abbie and I'm going to be interviewing our guest today who is Lord David Blunkett. Hello Lord Blunkett! 

[Lord Blunkett]: Yes, you can call me David, Abbie, if that's ok. 

[Abbie]: Ok, ok! 

[Lord Blunkett] Thank you very much for inviting me. 

[Abbie] Thank you very much for coming, it's lovely to meet you, lovely to have you here today. I just want to ask you a number of questions about your career and your life in general really. 

[Lord Blunkett]: Fire away! 

[Abbie]: The first question that I want to ask you is, what made you want to become a politician? 

[Lord Blunkett]: I think two main things. 1) My upbringing. Where I was brought up, in the north of Sheffield, people were working extremely hard for very little. My dad was killed in a works accident when I was 12 which obviously has a major impact on you. My grandfather, who'd lived with us, couldn't stay because my mum had breast cancer. Back in the 1950s very few people survived, she did, but it was quite horrendous. My grandad went into what was more than a geriatric ward, it was something from the 19th century and I swore then as a teenager that I would do something to make the world a better place. And the second bit along with that was reading history. I loved history and history taught me, firstly you shouldn't live in it, but you should learn from it. With learning from it, I knew that we had to get stuck in. If we were going to change the world, if we were going to do something about it, I needed to get involved. People do that in all sorts of ways, including with MACS of course. Being part of a charity, being part of a way of changing things, is a good thing in itself. My route was politics and I had to decide which party I would join when I was 16 and I joined the party that was nearest to the things that were right for me, that drove me, which was equality and justice and making the world a fairer place. So I joined the Labour Party. 

[Abbie]: Wow! That's really, really interesting! What would you say was the highlight of your career? 

[Lord Blunkett]: Oh goodness me! Quite a number of things, sometimes things that people wouldn't necessarily know about. When I was the leader of Sheffield City Council, way back in the 1980's when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, we set up a system, we set it up in the 70s, for free and cheap bus travel in the whole of Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Buses in the city centre around the shopping and leisure areas were free, you could travel anywhere for 10p in South Yorkshire. That was something I was really proud of and I played a part in putting together. Nationally, what I was able to do as Education and Employment Secretary is the thing I loved the most because we were transforming people's lives. We were completely rebuilding schools, we were introducing Sure Start and nursery education programmes for the first time. We introduced literacy and numeracy programmes in primary schools. We reopened access to higher education that had been frozen for 8 years. There were all sorts of things happening that was both the kind of things that I'd come into politics to do but also that I could see was making a difference to people's lives. It was a bit different at the Home Office. The Home Office had all the most horrendous things you could think of. It wasn't exactly a bundle of fun. We were dealing with counter-terrorism on the back of the 11th of September attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001. I'd only been Home Secretary for 3 months when that took place. I had policing, I had prisons and probation and the justice system at that time, before it was split in England, it's different in Scotland, but it was split between the Home Office and the Dept of Justice which was created. I had the lot of that, including drugs and immigration, and all the things that make a politician's life really miserable. But it was still worth being there and doing it because it was so critically important to the well-being of Britain. 

[Abbie]: Well, I actually think you are a very inspirational person, to be honest. 

[Lord Blunkett]: I hope I can continue just being there and saying to parents and to youngsters and to employers and to public authorities, 'Pull your finger out'. We've still got an enormous long way to go in terms of facilities, equal opportunity and access to leisure and to work, haven't we? You must be finding that, Abbie, as well. 

[Abbie]: Yes 

[Lord Blunkett] I'm in danger of interviewing you if I'm not careful [Laughter] But you must find that, mustn't you? That it's still a big challenge, isn't it? 

[Abbie]: Yes, it's definitely a challenge for all of us. 

[Lord Blunkett]: And the challenge doesn't disappear if people are positive and helpful but it makes things a lot easier. 

[Abbie] It does make it a lot easier for all of us I think. 

[Lord Blunkett] So I think that's one of the messages that we collectively all of us, have got to get out there and I still try and do that, including from the House of Lords. It gives me the chance to speak, to ask questions, to raise the profile of issues. We were debating yesterday what we were going to do about the remaining hereditary peers. We were trying to sort that out and in the middle of the debate we were talking about the diversity in the House of Lords. Actually there are more people with disabilities, not just because there's a lot of old codgers! [Laughter] But there are more people with disabilities. There are three of us who are blind, totally blind. Two of us have got guide dogs. Two of us, one of whom is a Conservative peer, Chris Holmes, was a Paralympian, he was a swimmer, and the former Chair of the Royal National Institute for the Blind, Colin Lowe, who is a cross bench peer and he doesn't have a guide dog, he uses a cane. And I've been using a long cane. Do you have a cane, Abbie? 

[Abbie]; Yes, I do 

[Lord Blunkett] Well I call my cane Donald Trump! [Laughter] Because it's white, it's thick, it's rigid and it's been pretty useless actually! [Laughter] So that's what I described it as! 

[Abbie]: What was difficult about being a politician? 

[Lord Blunkett]: Well, you're not very popular. It doesn't matter what you do and how well you do it, people have someone to blame and it's going to be politicians. So not on a personal level, it wasn't the interaction and meeting people, which I loved, going to community groups. It's just what you get on, well it used to be radio, television and the print media, now of course, for all of you at your age Abbie. I think you're 20, is that right? 

[Abbie]: Yes 

[Lord Blunkett] Yeah, it's social media now. I think it's worse for people now, because people think they can put things on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter and text what they'd never say to you in person. That's made it much more difficult I think, just because you can take brick backs, but after a bit it starts to wear you down. You expect to be criticised because you're on the public platform and you've asked for it and nobody's going to be sympathetic, but when it gets to real nasty abuse, and there's a lot of that about now, then I think that erodes our democracy. Because if young people like yourself said 'Would you recommend I came into politics?', I'd have to think three times before saying yes. I would say yes, I'd say get a life, have a bit of fun, make your way and then come in. But I'd say you need a thick skin. If you're going to be a journalist, Abbie, you need a thick skin as well by the way, because people will blame you. If they're not blaming me, they'll blame you Abbie! 

[Abbie]: Definitely! I do agree when you say about social media. 

[Lord Blunkett]: In the past I would have received a letter and if it was abusive then it was between me and them. But now it would all be spread round. There's some lovely stories. One of the Conservatives who I get on with very well, George Young, who's now in the Lords. When he was in the Commons and I was serving on a committee with him, we were up in the committee at 3am in the morning. He told a wonderful story of how a man wrote to him saying 'I don't expect you'll ever reply but if you do, ring me at whatever time you're reading this letter' and it was 3:30 in the morning! So he rang him and he said 'Why are you waking me up?!' and he said 'Well, you were abusive in your letter and you said you didn't believe for a minute that I'd actually read it and you told me to ring you when I was reading it, so that's what I'm doing!' [Laughter] 

[Abbie]: Don't ask someone to do something and then moan at them for doing it, that's what I say! 

 [Lord Blunkett]: There's nothing new there, Abbie! 

 [Abbie]: I'm sorry if I sound too honest but it's true! Do you still stay in touch with Tony Blair or any other Cabinet ministers? 

[Lord Blunkett]: Yes, at the time we're recording this interview, I've arranged to see Tony Blair for a coffee on the coming Tuesday morning. It's interesting, it's about every six months we get together. We grumble about how the world is going and what's happening to it. Social democracy is having a really hard time right across western Europe and North America so I'd like to discuss with him what we're going to do about that. 

[Abbie]: You sound a bit like me when you say about meeting up and having a bit of a grumble about the way the world's going. 

[Lord Blunkett]: Yes, but I've got an excuse, I'm older [Laughter] You'll have to be much more positive, won't you? 

[Abbie]: Yes 

[Lord Blunkett]: So, thank you very much Abbie for a tremendous interview and I think we're now over to the audience. 

[Audience member, Kevin]: Hello David, my name's Kevin. I work for LOOK UK. So, you were talking earlier about young people getting into politics, what would you say are the best ways for young people looking to get into politics to do that? How can they engage in politics? How can they begin to get a career in it? 

[Lord Blunkett]: I think I have to say this because I think it's just practically true, you do need to belong to a political party. There are people standing as independents for local government. There have been MPs over the last 20 years elected, a couple of them on the back of local campaigns and one elected back in 2001 in relation to the health service and closure of a local hospital. You do get that but on the whole, the route is through a political party, the party that's nearest to you, the one that you feel is a vehicle that you can engage with. Because no political party reflects everything we feel and think. We're not automatons, which is why I'm really worried about parties where the message comes down from the top and you've got to do what you're told. Because that's not how it should work. Getting involved with the local branch, whichever the party is. Showing that you can do it, the hard bits, the grind of campaigning. Maybe standing for local election, Parish, District, County, whatever it might be, City. And demonstrating that you've got a wider interest, because the route to political action isn't just getting into Parliament, whether it's the devolved assemblies or regional authorities that are developing in England, or the Westminster Parliament. That isn't what politics is solely about. It's about changing the world in other ways. So, campaigns at local or national level which change people's minds, bring pressure to bear are just as important as part of our democracy. And I think that's the way to do it. Then make a choice at what level and how intensely do you want to be involved? Some people would just like to do a little and come in from time to time and campaign on a specific issue that's closest to their hearts. Other people want to get really stuck in. I think the last piece of advice is always keep a life though, because if you over do it, you begin to lose that humanity, that connection when you first came in. And that's what I was talking about in  government, I was in real danger of losing myself. When I stepped down from the Cabinet, members of my family said 'Welcome back' which is a pretty clear message that I'd gone! 

[Audience member, James] What would be your three points of getting into politics? 

[Lord Blunkett] Ok, the three things to get in... Know what values you want to espouse. In other words, what is it you want to do? What is driving you? What are the reasons behind wanting to be in politics? Secondly, understand that you will have to put in the most enormous time and effort. It's not going to happen unless you do. Thirdly, be incredibly patient, because sometimes it takes an enormous amount of time to make progress. 

[Applause] 

[Audience member, James] I think he's a really down to earth person and to my family he's a massive inspiration to us all. Because after I got diagnosed, my mum was doing a lot of research into his life and how he coped with growing up without any vision. I think that has grown on me, if you know what I mean. There's that person out there with that inspiration to  give out to the world. Then obviously his involvement with politics. 

[MACS staff member] What's the key thing that you'll remember from the interview you just saw? 

[James] Probably the thing he said about his white cane! About Donald Trump! [Laughter] His cane's called Donald Trump, that literally made the day to be honest! 

[End music] 

[Voiceover] This special podcast was made possible by the Microphthalmia, Anophthalmia and Coloboma Support Charity. The episode was written by Helen O'Brien (MACS) and produced by Audio Oli, Oli Harrisson.