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ON THE RECORD
MARGARET BECKETT INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 06.12.92
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JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Margaret Beckett, Deputy Leader of your
Party, how do you respond to those murmurings?
MARGARET BECKETT: As you say, it's just about five months
since John and myself were elected, one of those months of course was August.
We then had a new Shadow Cabinet and a new National Executive Committee
elected. In that period we forced the recall of Parliament in September,
Since Parliament fully returned, which was about six weeks ago now, we forced
the Government into a complete U-turn on coalfield closures and to re-examine
their policies and we've called them to account over the sales of weapons to
Iraq, on what they've reported to the House of Commons, and all of that.
Now quite apart from that, we've set in
motion the restructuring of the Party's finances and organisation; we've begun
to set up new policy making machinery, the joint..the Committee between the
National Executive and the Shadow Cabinet and two new policy commissions which
will look at the European Community and its policies and, indeed, at
constitutional reform, the way we are governed in some depth. We have also set
up a working party to examine our relationship with the Trade Union Movement
and the Commission on Social Justice will be announced in full before Christmas
- now I actually I don't think that's bad.
DIMBLEBY: You don't think that's bad. Do you then
think that Neil Kinnock's a bit off beam when he urged you to get cracking?
BECKETT: I don't think..I think Neil's remarks
frankly you've somewhat misinterpreted. He said that the leadership will need
to get cracking and will need to put in hand the work that needs to be done and
he is as well placed as anyone to know that we're doing just that because, of
course, he's a member of the National Executive Committee himself.
DIMBLEBY: So you don't interpret that as a kick in
the pants?
BECKETT: Not in the slightest.
DIMBLEBY: What about those in the Party who
say - and I've got one of them who says that the leadership is "sleepwalking
into oblivion at the moment" - that you would regard as off beam.
BECKETT: Well I would if anybody had said it..
DIMBLEBY: Nick Raynsford (phon) said it.
BECKETT: Yes, he did and he said precisely that
he was not talking about the leadership. I've read the article, I've read his
letter objecting to the interpretation put in it and, indeed, I've even talked
to him about it and I can assure you that is not what he is saying at all.
What he is saying is that he wants to see an intellectual ferment on the Left
in this country. He wants to see all sorts of ideas coming forward, all kinds
of discussions, so do we. He was most careful in his article to say that he
thinks what a good job John Smith is doing and to say that he believes John is
very well placed to use and to advance the kind of ideas he wants to see coming
forward.
DIMBLEBY: What do you make then of those who say
there are some very..if you want to, emerge at the next election as a Party
that is clearly completed the process of modernisation that Neil Kinnock had
put in train, that can offer itself as a relevant, modern alternative to those
who say you have now to face hard choices and you can't postpone them, you
can't balk at them.
BECKETT: Well I don't dispute that but I would
just point out that that is precisely what we're doing.
DIMBLEBY: Alright. Now let's go to one key area
where one must presume that leadership is absolutely vital if you're going to
get change in time to demonstrate to the public that you are not what you were
in this respect. That's the link between the Unions and the Labour Party. Now
John Smith's been unequivocal on this as you know. He has said one member, one
vote. What leadership is it then, now to be completely mum on the issue while
it meanders through a review Committee that looks as if it's heading for fudge
and mudge on it?
BECKETT: You pointed out yourself that it's five
months since John was elected and I remeinded you one of those months was
August. I don't think it's meandering to have a Committee which is looking at
something as fundamental and as important to the Party and the whole Movement
as the relationship between the Party and the Trade Unions sitting for such a
period of time. I hope that that review group will be able to draw its work to
a conclusion early-ish in the New Year - certainly in the New Year - and that
then we will have something of considerable interest and depth to say to the
Party. But let me just say to you that if you remember, I think perhaps even
on your own programme, earlier in this year, I was saying that I thought it was
most important to do this work carefully and thoroughly and to get it right and
it was more important to do that than to get it tommorrow.
DIMBLEBY: Now, given your view on that, John Smith
has made his view about what the outcome should be very clear, at the point at
which he was elected Leader - one member, one vote. Why isn't he as Leader,
and why aren't you as his Deputy, going around making that case so that people
can hear that loud and clear?
BECKETT: You are talking about one aspect of the
relationship between the Party and the Unions. You're talking about the issue
of how the Leader of the Party is elected and on that John has, as you say,
made some firm comments. But it's a very rich and also a very full
relationship between the Party and the Unions. There's far more to it than
just how the Leader of the Party as an individual is elected and we're looking
at all those links and ramifications and you say, you know, shouldn't
pronouncements be being made. John is not the kind of Leader who makes up his
mind before he's heard the debate and considered the arguments and I don't
think you'd respect him if he were.
DIMBLEBY: But on this question, both on the
election of the Leader and the selection of MPs to key areas where the Unions
have a role, John Smith has made it very clear what his view is. He's listened
to the arguments - it's been raging for long enough in your Party - and he's
got his view clearly enough. Are you saying that his view on that is not now
clear?
BECKETT: No. What I'm saying is quite simple and
that is that a review has been set up by the Party, it is being undertaken, it
is underway, the work is going on, John is aware of the work that is going on
and, when that review's been finished, it will be published and everyone will
have a chance to make their comments and observations and John, I have no
doubt, will make them along with everybody else. But I repeat - what's the
point in having a working party if you don't let it work and then think about
what it says and come to conclusions afterwards. There's no point in that if
the Leader's just going to pronounce.
DIMBLEBY: But if the Party does not accept John
Smith's own view of what is required the Party will, by his lighgts, have gone
for a fudge and he will have failed.
BECKETT: Well you're leaping to conclusions which
the Party has not yet reached, never mind promulgated, so I think we're a
little ahead of ourselves there.
DIMBLEBY: But we're not really, because John
Major has..John Smith - I beg his pardon - has said I want one member, one
vote, I believe in one member, one vote. Are you saying it's not up to him?
BECKETT: No, I'm not and you know I'm not. We
all have said consistantly for a very long time that the foundation of the way
that the Party takes its decisions has to be one member, one vote. We're
looking now at the way in which it's linked with the Trade Union Movement, is
shaped and what form it takes and how it can be expressed.
DIMBLEBY: But this sounds, Margaret, this sounds
to me exactly like fudge and mudge. One member, one vote means one full member
of the Party one vote, it doesn't mean...
BECKETT: I suggest, I suggest that you wait until
the working party has finished and reported and you can look at its conclusions
and then you can decide whether it's fudge and mudge but, since it hasn't come
to firm conclusions yet, it's a bit hard to judge them.
DIMBLEBY: But if he believes that the
modernisation of the Party - and I presume you are absolutely at one with him
on this, am I right, pesonally?
BECKETT: Of course.
DIMBELBY: One hundred per cent on it - that he
believes you have to have one member, one vote for these critical decisions and
he ends up getting something which brings in millions of Trade Unionists by
some smart device. That won't be one member, one vote will it?
BECKETT: We're talking about the whole nature of
the Party's relationship with the Unions. I repeat what I said to you a moment
ago. The comments John made were about the way in which the Leader is elected.
There are a whole range of issues on which there's a relationship between the
Party and the Unions. We want to maintain a clear link and clear distinctions
between the different roles of the two groups.
DIMBLEBY: But isn't the job... But Margaret...
BECKETT: There's a limit to going round this
territory five or six different times. Let me say once more - and then I hope
I won't need to say it any more - we've got a working group. It's looking at
the relationship. It has not reached conclusions. You appear to want John to
dictate what the relationship should be. He won't do that because he doesn't
want to do that. He wants to get the report of the working group and then come
to decisions on it, and that is what will happen, and I can assure you that
there will be no fudge and mudge about it - it will be very clear and very
straightforward.
DIMBLEBY: You see, this is precisely the point at
issue. The murmuring is there because people - hold on a moment - it is there
because people want to hear a Leader being a Leader, saying to his Party "This
is what I think, this is what I care for, this is what I think is required of
my Party if we're going to get there - not "I'm going to wait and see what this
discussion comes up with and then say whether I agree with them or not".
BECKETT: Well, I think Jonathan that what you're
describing is a process, not of leadership, but of dictatorship. You appear to
think that John Smith should form his own views about the major issues of the
day, should tell the Party what they are and we should all fall meekly into
line behind him. That is not what being a Leader means to me, and I don;t
think it's what being a Leader means to John. John is a man who is perfectly
confident in his own ability to lead and I can assure you has no difficulty
whatsoever in making his views known, and making sure they're known to others,
but I repeat what I said to you a few moment ago - he doesn't believe in
reaching conclusions before he's had the debate.
DIMBLEBY: Will HE get his way even if his views
are not those of the majority, or not?
BECKETT: I think that there is every possibility
that his views will also be the views of the majority, but we shall see.
DIMBLEBY: If they're not?
BECKETT: Oh, let's - we're heaping hypothetical
question on hypothetical question to no useful purpose, I think. There is no
problem. John is an extremely strong Leader. He has strong and clear views of
his own but, I repeat, he does believe in democratic debate. He does believe
in the machinery by which the Party and the Movement take their decisions and
having his own input and his own position to steer that debate. He does not
believe in making pronouncements ex cathedra.
DIMBLEBY: Let me put another area to you where the
Party could be seen to be flunking - the Leadership could be seen to be
flunking the issue. At the last Election, the question of proportional
representation was fudged by the Leadership as Neil Kinnock only yesterday made
clear. He's now told us that he was actually in favour of proportional
representation - didn't say so - he's come clean on it. You two are still
fudging it.
BECKETT: I don't think anybody could truthfully
say, Jonathan, that I've ever fudged my views on proportional representation.
DIMBLEBY: You're still deeply opposed?
BECKETT: They are more than well known.
DIMBLEBY: Just for those who may be outside the
inner circle, they are that you are deeply opposed to proportional
representation.
BECKETT; Yes, I am. I believe that all the
options of proportional representation that I have looked at so far suggest to
me that they put more power into the hands of politicians and less into the
hands of the electorate, and I am never comfortable with that.
However, I do recognise - as a democrat
- that there are, first, that there are many others who don't share that point
of view, who believe, and I now know that Neil Kinnock is among them (I didn't
know that till yesterday, I didn't know what his own, personal view was) but,in
fact, there are many people who take a very different view and the Party,
therefore, has to look very seriously at the sound case they advance and,
second, what the Party has to do is to say well, if we were to change the
electoral system, what are the merits and demerits of the different options?
What would, what might be a good pattern for Britain, because I think it would
be quite wrong to just suggest that you can pick up a pattern from somewhere
else and adapt it to British use. That's the work that the Party's doing - I
am a member of the Commission looking at that and I think it's very worthwhile
and, when it has been done - again this is a group that has not reached
conclusions - the group will reach its own conclusions, will make
recommendations and then there will be a proper and very serious debate in the
Party and finally decisions will be reached.
DIMBLEBY: Margaret Beckett, there you are - you've
said there's debate, but you've made your position very clear again as a Leader
of your Party, as Deputy Leader of the Party. Why isn't John Smith using...
BECKETT: I've actually done that as an
individual, and I've done so for a very long period of time, because I've
chosen to engage in that particular area of debate.
DIMBLEBY: Why isn't the Leader making his view
clear in this debate? You're engaging in debate. We don't hear it from John
Smith that he's in favour, although everyone suspects that he is.
BECKETT: If John were now to give his view, then
I think that there would be a danger that people would feel that he was pushing
the enquiry in a particular direction - that he was, in fact, pre-judging the
result of the review. I think that would be wrong.
DIMBLEBY: So he's leading from back here. He's
leading from the back here not from the front?
BECKETT: Oh, we're going round rather the same
territory.
DIMBLEBY: OK, alright...
BECKETT: And as I say, I think it's very
important. You either have working parties and debate and consider issues and
thrash them out, or you don't. You just have somebody who says - I've made up
my mind, this is what I think, this is what we'll do. I repeat, I don't think
that that is the way that you lead a democratic political party. I don't think
it's the way you lead a democratic country. There has to be exchange of views
- give and take.
DIMBLEBY: OK. Let me ask you then on the thorny
question of Europe. Key figures in the Party - Roy Hattersley; on Friday
evening Donald Dewar made it clear that they would not let the Maastricht
Treaty fall. They would personally oppose anything that produced a situation
where Maastricht could not be ratified. The leadership doesn't say that - why
don't you say that?
BECKETT: What the leadership has said is that we
will look very carefully at the Maastricht Bill and Treaty as it goes through
the House of Commons. We will do our utmost to make the kind of changes - for
example, to see the introduction of the Social Chapter - that we want to see,
and we think it's extremely important in the process of doing that not to
discuss every bit of our tactics, every bit of our strategy, to say in advance
precisely what we're going to do on this and that, because as the parliamentary
situation develops, we shall want to use every ounce of our room for manoeuvre
to get our way if humanly possible on the Maastricht Bill.
DIMBLEBY: It's not the task of leadership to say
we will make sure that it is in a position to be ratified?
BECKETT: Well, we've certainly said - and that's,
it's been said repeatedly by our colleagues who deal in detail, day to day,
with the issues of the Maastricht Treaty - that, of course, it's the Party's
own view, it is the Conference view indeed, that the Maastricht Treaty,
unsatisfactory in many respects though it may be, is the best option that is
on offer. Of course, we haven't got the full Maastricht Treaty on offer in
this country and that's something that we shall be trying to remedy in the
Committee stage in the House of Commons.
DIMBLEBY: And this is not a fudge and a mudge and,
just as on the other issues we've discussed, you're not fudging and mudging,
you're actually leading on this?
BECKETT: No, we're certainly not. I mean,
unfortunately, it looks as if we're likely to have a very, very long process in
the ratification of the Committee stage and, indeed, all the rest of the
procedures of bringing the Bill through, but what we are certainly determined
to do is to do everything we can to make sure that the full Maastricht Treaty
which is on offer to the other Member countries of the European Community, is
on offer in this country. We shall do everything we can to achieve that and
that's not in doubt.
DIMBLEBY: On this question of leadership - thank
you very much for talking to me.
BECKETT: And you.
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