Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael. Michael Parkinson. Unflappable nature. Another described him as one of the most decent and well-liked men in British politics. He is the Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe. Sir Geoffrey, a good man in a blizzard. It doesn't mean you make a good man on a desert island, you think? I'm not sure. I think the technique's rather different. And in the blizzard I was with a lot of other people, so I had company to keep me going.

What about the background of yours? You're Welsh. Did music play a big part in your life, for instance? has, yes, but as a listener rather than a performer. I have painfully performed my way I've always enjoyed singing, we have a daughter who's a singing teacher, but really music is an inescapable part of the background of a Welshman. My father and my aunt were both regular chapelgoers, my mother went to a different chapel. Church and my grandfather founded one or even two Welsh-speaking chapels so that Welsh hymns That crap. Your grandfather, he founded a union too, didn't he? He was a founder member of the tinbladers union, yes. What about your father, what did he do? Oh, he was a solicitor, went into his uncle's firm, a family firm started in the last century. And he became the local coroner and Doctor of the Justices.

I used to go round the South Wales valleys of West Mork and with him as a boy, going to... Many of those tragic inquests that he had to preside over. And he was a very typical Welshman of his generation, not allowed to become involved in politics because of-- job. He knew Lloyd George, Lloyd George knew my father. And I think I derived quite a lot of my approach to politics from him. His family. What about the area you lived in? This is Port Talbot, wasn't it? Would I be right in assuming that that was very much sort of Labour stronghold at the time? Oh yes, it's... A massively strong Labour seat it was then, it still is now. I fought my first parliamentary election there in 1955. And again in 1959 against a Labour majority that I managed to haul down from 18,000 to 16,000, but that was about as far as it ever came. Let's have a first choice of records, Geoffrey. Well, it has to be something from that background. 'Cullen Larn', sung by the address of the

Yorkie male choir. Difficult to choose which one of the famous hymn tunes on it have. Kum Ronda

the best known, Karunla, one with different but still equally happy memories for me. you

Sir Geoffrey, were you a bright child? I suppose I was, yes. I was lucky enough to get an exhibition to Winchester, and in due course a scholarship, a minor scholarship, to Cambridge. So I must have been on the... Right side of the tracks. What about your ambitions as a boy? Did you want to be anything other than a politician when you were growing up? Became very strongly interested in politics from about the age of 14 or 15 and I think that... I was always then set for a double career of politics and the law. My father was in the law and it seemed natural and inevitable. To him and to me and to the family that I should follow him, which I did, and I've never regretted that. It's a marvellous profession to be in. But then politics was the other. Part of the bloodstream. What was it about politics that first fascinated you? I mean, what were the first instincts? Well, I suppose that when I first went away to boarding school to Winchester... One became interested in the life of the house. It was a very small but active community.

Lots of things one could find oneself involved in doing. And then we had a particularly impressive form master who... Allowed us to run the work of the form for a year by a sort of democratic elected assembly. He called it a boley because he was a great classical scholar. And I found myself irresistibly drawn into trying to organize things, and a politician, I suppose, is by definition, a fluke. Those who don't like him, a busybody. For himself, he's someone who cares about the society in which he lives. Doubt about which side the political fence should be on? Not really. I think that in 1945... I did actually canvas for a liberal candidate, but I think he was probably a national liberal, so that's alright. But... Having lived one's university years under a Labour government, having lived one's childhood under a Labour council, one moved into the other end of the spectrum. I've never regretted it. I think I've always been able to apply conservative thinking in a fashion that is.

Compatible with all the best that is about being Welsh. Let's go back to Winchester now. They were, I believe, ensconced a good academic record. But it's also a school, of course, with a very fine sporting tradition. Did you play... Part in that? As little as possible. Why so? We were obliged to do exercise. I shall get But 70 hours a week and we had to record it in an honesty book showing how much fun it done and of what kind. And I used to work out the best possible way of completing the program in the least possible time. I think that... The truth about my sporting performance is to be found in my achievement when we went into a compulsory boxing competition at Octave when I was training as an officer. And I didn't have much enthusiasm for that either. At the end of it I was adjudged by the judges to be runner up for best loser. That's about as modest a sporting achievement as you can post. Let's have a second choice of record. The second choice...

Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. One can take almost any part of it. I've chosen the end of the concerto.

The next question is from the audience.

There's a very beautiful piece of music. Why do you particularly choose this, Geoffrey? Well, because it's beautiful, but because it has such clear memories for most of us of the film being... Encounter. It's probably one of the most natural pieces of film music ever chosen, ever written. One of the things that I found myself doing at school was running the School Film Society in the days when they only had silent films, and one had to try and find musical accompaniments These films would arrive by post on a Saturday morning, and I would spend the whole of the Saturday with a friend, ploughing... ...through the House Record Library saying, Ah, we want the second side of the third record of Beethoven's sixth, whatever it was. And this record is such a beautiful piece of film music, it reminds me of the whole of that rather...

Fun part of my life. Are you still a film fan? Not really, I would still like to be, but one of the problems with one's present existence is one hardly ever has time to go to the cinema. I spent quite a lot of time a few years ago making home movies. Again, I've given that up now because it needs such an awful lot of work to do it, but I shall come back to it when I retire. Because I like the business of making films. Let's go back to your career now. You left Winchester, you went to the army. You're going to? Well, I left just before the war was over and went into the signals and eventually went to the East African signals out to serve in Kenya for a couple of years. Did you enjoy that? Yes, I joined the sequence it must be said because on the very first Field day, we went out to in the school corps. I marched out there with all the rest of them and saw one group of characters who came out by taxi. And I said, who are they?

And why did they come that way? I still deal with the signal section. So I set my mind on that. and I... I actually enjoyed making my own radio set and things like that, and it became a natural thing to gravitate to. And when I went out to East Africa to be one of the two officers in the unit responsible for it. Communications between Nairobi, Mogadishu, Kampala and the northern Fatou province. Half of East Africa was part of our little sort of mini empire was a tremendous fan. You climbed Kilimanjaro, which is a very glamorous thing to do. Put this time in a mountaineer or do you just do it for a bet or something? No, I found that was something that I got... Drawn into when I was in the Army, serving first of all up in Yorkshire in Catrick in the Yorkshire Moors. In the army and at Cambridge, I had quite a lot of modest mountain timing. And with Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya on one's doorstep, as it were, in East Africa, it was obviously worthwhile trying to do it. And I remember in the end I had to climb...

Kilimanjaro by myself in the sense that the friend who's going to come with me couldn't come and I had the service Of one African guide and four African porters for five days going up the mountain and coming down and the total cost of that magnificent expedition, including food and all portraiture, eight pounds. Fantastic. Let's have another choice of record. Tuxedo Junction by the Glen Miller Orchestra. Marvelously professional piece of music.

Sir Geoffrey, after the army came university, of course, and was it here that your political ambitions really took shape? I think once I got back to university I started off on the business of university politics and became chairman of the Conservative Association, took an active part in the union and so on. Really began getting stuck into it. - You called them by one in '52. Was this very much just a means to a political end? biding time in a sense. No, it was always my chosen profession and I always needed to establish myself in a profession with an independent source of income and I... Deliberately remained practicing at the bar, not getting into Parliament, until I'd been established well and truly as an independent barrister. I didn't get into the House until 64, just 12 years later. Before that, of course, before you went in, you fought up rather injured twice, 1955 and 1959. What kind of an experience was that for the young politician? Great fun actually, because one was fighting in one's home territory, virtually all the people around.

Whether they were on my side or on the Labour side or supporting the Plaid Cymru-Welsh nationalist candidate. Most of them were friends of myself, my family, so it was a good way in which to earn one's political spurs. And there was no danger of getting in. I didn't want to get in as soon as that. And it wasn't a souring experience at all? that it reinforced my perception of the need for politics and politicians to remember the universality of the constituency at which they have to appeal. I think that the traditional Welsh Labour movement was a movement that embraced a tremendous passion for quality of education, a tremendous passion for home ownership. Tremendous patriotism, and one that was not so different from the kind of conservatism that I believe in. I think in some ways that's one of the pities of the way in which the labour movement has gone in the years subsequently. It's moved away from its popular roots of that kind.

I didn't feel in a hostile environment at all. I felt I had to try and convince the Labour majority of my fellow countrymen that... Tories were not born with horns and tails and cloven hooves. That, thanks, has been part of my mission. Never since. You obviously feel very fondly for your background. There's a very strong link back there. Still with you. What about your accent? Do you ever find when you go back down there Welsh in manner of speech? I think so, yes. Not very deeply, not very contrary, because so much of my school days was spent away from Wales, but I certainly Of identifying with and lapsing into the background, so to speak. And then of course, I don't go there very often nowadays. I find the interesting thing is that when I come back to London, as in the old days on the train to Paddington. One finds oneself reinforcing one's conviction that one really would like to be in Wales after all. Now you entered Parliament in 1964 as MP for Bebbie.

And that's up in Liverpool, isn't it? It's on the Wirral side of the military, the other side of the river. What kind of a constituency was that? Well, when I arrived there, it looked as though it was a safe Conservative seat. When I left... It wasn't because I lost it. That's right, in '66. Yes. But it was a mixed seat, including five wards of Birkenhead starting just outside the Cameload shipyard, extending to Port Sunlight and the tremendous Unilever works, and some of the World we involved to some extent a Liverpool commuter seat as well I've got it very much. When you lost him in '66, I mean, was it, again, in any sense, a dispiriting occasion for you? We knew we were on the edge, as it were. When I held it in '64, when we first fought the election, the majority came down to 2000 odd. And we thought... We might be able to hold it through the swing of the labour that came a little bit later. I lost it by 2066. I remember going back to our house after the count that day.

And sending a telegram rather dispirited to my clerk in the temple, knowing I had to go back to the temple. To the bar saying simply, Brother, can you spare a dime? Let's have another choice of record. I'm choosing a number by the Beatles because they were very much part of the flavor of life on Merseyside at that time. It was a time when Merseyside was confident.

And seeming to do better. And I've chosen one of their more sensitive numbers, Eleanor Rigby. Eleanor Rigby picks up her rice in the church where her wedding has been Lives in her dream, waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in her jar by the door Who is it for? All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong? Sir Geoffrey, you became the Member for Righout in 1970 and in '71 you drafted the Industrial Relations Bill. One reads about you, it comes to a lot of commentators regard this as being a kind of albatross around your neck for a while. Do you see it that way? No.

I think on the contrary, it was, if anything, the right work a bit before its time, because one of the tragedies of the British industrial scene... Has been the long delay in modernizing our industrial relations. We didn't make it then. The Act was repealed when we lost the election in '74. We've had to come back to it, of course, since in the last years and all those things which are now taken for granted like the right to have ballots before you strike, the right to have ballots before you elect union officers and so on, the change that has taken place in the last seven years. Has really been recapturing the ground we would have won in '71 had we not lost that '74 election. Detail was right. Never is. But the battle that we were fighting was one that had to be fought. Of course at that time we were talking of course you were working under Mr Heath as the leader. What were the qualities of Ted Heath? What did you admire about him? I think the determination.

I remember him presiding unusually at one meeting of NEDI, the National Economic Development Council. When we were beginning to run into the storm of the oil price rise that happened in late 1973. and also... For taking place as to whether we should continue going for growth or not. And he said there, rather strikingly, this time we are determined to sail through the whirlpool. Now, you may say the policy... Were right, they were wrong, but they were policies to which he was committed, to which he was committed with great passion, and I think it was a great misfortune that the All price changes were followed by the miners strike which dislodged that government which was doing many things right. What about the tour of leadership in 1975? I mean you were a contestant in that. - What, 19 votes, I think, didn't you? - Yes, modest figure. - Modest figure, yes. Did you think you had any chance of winning? - No, quite frankly, no. I thought it was worthwhile trying to put one's name into the running.

Because one didn't know quite how the ballot was going to work out. In certain circumstances it might have been possible that I would win. But I think it was worthwhile. Certainly runs independence in that way anyway. What about the present leader, Mrs Satcher? most controversial politicians of modern times. You've worked closely with her for a few years now. What do you discern in her that you admire? I think the first thing is the... And that everyone is familiar with the tenacity, the determination, the qualities that led to her being dubbed the Iron Lady. A terrific insight and toughness. Alongside that, what people don't as readily appreciate, an immense humanity as well. The occasions in which one has seen her making a spontaneous gesture which is prompted simply by an impulse. Self-humanity that comes across her. Could you give me an example of that? Well, I think when bad news comes of the death, for example, suddenly of a close friend of

More quickly than anybody else. She is moved to do or say the thing that you wish you had thought of. Of saying and doing yourself before she had. That kind of very spontaneous gesture. I don't expect to get an answer to this, but what would be the things that you didn't like about her? Well, you're not going to get an answer to it, but I think that... Nobody is going to have the positive qualities that Margaret Thatcher has got, without having, to some extent, the flip side, but taking the personality as a whole. Very remarkably impressive personality. Let's have another record, Sir Geoffrey. Cliff Richard.

A surprising choice and his recording of Summer Holiday. Cliff Richard and Summer Holiday. holiday. Sir Jeff... You picked that record. Partly because I've always admired professionalism, and I think that Cliff Richard is a very good example of professionalism. That has survived changing editions with remarkable skill and tenacity. The tunes are marvelous. There was a splendid film when he made it, Summer Holiday, a film that for me symbolized...

It's the opening up of Europe and holidays beyond the shores of Britain for... A new generation, a whole new group of young English people who have never been abroad before and that film when he ends up... With the shadows on the slopes of the Acropolis was a kind of symbol of political... And travelling and liberation. The music makes it sound good as well. I bet they didn't know that when they made the film. You're going to see all that in it. I must say, I know about that. Let's talk about the job or the role of foreign secretary. It's to be a very, very arduous job. What is your working day? How does it start? ...because one is in the office by half past eight, normally, quite often doing a broadcast on the... ...today program before that, quite often up for some time before that, reading through the inevitable... Boxes of papers and the day normally ends either in the House of Commons or in Entertaining some visiting foreign statesmen. And of course a great deal of the time is spent outside this country anyway. Last year I think I spent between...

And a hundred days outside Britain during the year. People make guesses about how long you sleep. It ranges from one and three quarter hours, which I find unlikely, to four hours a night. I mean, what is the truth of it? Quarter hours you can discount that one certainly. I guess that during the working week on average four hours is probably about right but then at the weekend I catch up with a good long Four hours is very little. Has it always been that way? For a long time, yes. Partly, I think, because in my school days we used to have to do fire watching once every five nights. And I found that I could cope with that better than... I often took on their shift as it were. Not the whole night, it went two hours a night. It got me into the habit of sleeping short. Now what about the travel? Because lots of foreign secretaries have found the travel to be indeed arduous and tiring. It seems that you don't find that at all. I think not. I think... It's got to be grateful for the fact that a lot of one's journeys are made on the private aircraft for use for a lot of long journeys. So it is the best way of travelling.

One couldn't do it any other way, Frank, because there's so much work being done between stops. And I've always thought that... One's doing a job that's a hard one, one must also try and look for the opportunities of enjoying it. And I've never felt guilty if one finds oneself with half a day to spare having finished something soon or got it available. If I then do take... Take time off and see something go somewhere and enjoy the opportunity of our ones there and I think that helps to keep it going. Which have been the most fascinating trips then that you've made as Foreign Secretary? Oh I think in never... Because of the nature of the work you're doing, the many journeys I did to China, mainly in connection with negotiating the Hong Kong agreement, because that was a fascinating exercise trying to construct a framework of agreement between countries as different as... Ourselves and the People's Republic of China and knowing that one was helping to shape the future for the... Of people who live in Hong Kong. Did you find you had much chance there to get away from the routine of work and to explore?

Into what might call some normal parts of China, meet normal people. I had a chance of exploring in China on a visit I made before. That round started when I was in opposition, we were out there in 1978. We were then able to travel to quite a number of places to visit Shanghai, to go up to the remote north-western During the Hong Kong negotiations very little time off, I think one afternoon at the Summer Palace is all I can remember. I suppose personal relationships in the job that you do are in fact very very important. You must strike up... Some kind of relationship beyond the business one with the people that you're dealing with. Difficult it is with the vast cultural and language differences there are between say you and us and the Chinese. Suggesting the way in which, in some cases, it is possible to establish a relationship It surmounts the interpretation. You get into such a natural, spontaneous flow of conversation. I think that I was able to...

That with my Chinese opposite number Mr. Wu Xiaqian. He could speak some English so there was an additional point of contact. I think it's one of the things again that strikes one as remarkable that to a certain extent anyway the management of relations between two huge countries more than one. 50 million of us and more than a billion of them, can depend at that point of contact on the personal relationship between two people who have grown up almost by chance. Certainly true, and it's a fascinating part of the job. Sir Jeffery, let's have another choice of record. Well, one to illustrate-- I think one of my favorite leisure pastimes, opera, my wife and I go to a lot whenever we have the chance. From the magic flute. The Papageno Duet. *Papageno Duet*

Sir Jeffrey, you spend an awful lot of time abroad. Traveling around seeing other countries. I wonder what perspective of Britain you have with... You get back? What do you think when you come back to country looking at it with an almost fresh eye? It's often when he's most struck by the greenness of Britain. So much fresher than almost any other country. Also I suppose by the immense diversity of our history. But what about the other side of it? I mean, by comparison to certain other countries and We seem to be a fairly scruffy nation. Does that ever strike you as well? Yes, it does. I was criticised by someone a year or two back for making just that point, but I don't apologise for it. I think that if you compare the style of the streets and the parks and the public places... In many other countries in Europe, but not just in Europe, with the impression you get in too many places in Britain. There is a seediness about it which is unnecessary and irritating. I don't think it represents...

The best of what we can do and I would love to see it being improved. Mr Jeffery, let's have another choice of record. ...a record made by Miss Beatrice Harrison, playing the cello herself, alongside a nightingale, a piece of music by Borgia. Why did you choose this? - I remember hearing the story of it being recorded. It's a very strange thing to have done more than-- 50 years ago, and the recording was actually made in a wood in my constituency, near Oxford,

Adds a certain amount of personal charm to it. Geoffrey, several commentators remark upon your restraint, your low profile, they describe it as, I think, they say...

It's some of them as a shortcoming in a political career, do you? I don't think so, as long as it isn't seen as the only aspect of a personality. I think that a lot of leadership, particularly in today's... Can be advanced by being human and approachable and calm and not too melodramatic, I think Politician has got to be able to make the dramatic speech at the party conference. I've not done too badly at that either. But on the whole, I'd like to being thought of as someone whom people can get on with. You seem remarkably unflappable, even tense. I mean, are you really like that? Most of the time, not all the time. You'd have to ask people who... Closely with me and my wife to know what the total power was like. What might she say do you think? I think she would say that when I lose my temper it's manifest by a certain Hunting obstinacy rather than by dramatic fury, and that probably makes it even less attractive. Let's then have a final record.

Well, it's Noel Card with a record that reminds me of at least some of the places I've visited during the last few years where Englishmen as well as Welshmen and Scotsmen have made some of their own. Something of a role for Britain around the world. ♪ Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun ♪ ♪ The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to ♪ ♪ Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one ♪ ♪ But Englishmen deter stars, see your stars ♪ ♪ In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare ♪ ♪ In the Malay states there are hats like plates which the British won't wear ♪ ♪ At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done ♪ ♪ But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun ♪ Sir Geoffrey, you're now on your desert island. Do you think? Yes I think I would. I would like to have some purpose in life and I can't think of anything better than trying to get out of the place. Are you practical enough to make a raft to get away on? No I'm...

Bad at that kind of thing but I'd have plenty of time to practice. Let's imagine that seven of your eight records have been washed away in some sort of tidal wave and you're left with one record of the eight you've chosen, which would it be? I'm allowed to have the whole record. I'll have the magic flute because that embraces the Papagena duet. Right, you can have the entire opera. What about a book? See, the good food guide. Partly because it'll give me something nice to think about, and partly because it might give me some ideas as to what on earth to eat. And what about the luxury object? A computer- Bridge game, if I'm allowed that, if I'm allowed the solar battery to make it work. The wish is granted.

Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪