NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES, OF IDENTIFYNG INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ............................................................................... ON THE RECORD MARGARET BECKETT INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 06.12.92 ............................................................................... 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.