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 IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY ................................................................................ ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 7.2.93 ................................................................................ JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Good afternoon and welcome to On The Record. As you probably saw in the News, John Smith has just finished making what was billed as his most important speech since becoming Leader of the Labour Party. Did he show that after all he does have that elusive vision thing? Two influential commentators deliver their verdict. DIMBLEBY: A little under a hour ago John Smith finished what was billed as his most important speech since he became leader of the Labour Party over six months ago. Until now he has been much castigated for his failure to lead from the front. The result say his critics - inside as well as outside the Party - is that Labour is adrift and rudderless. With his speech this morning, as it were, will it turn that tide of criticism? JOHN SMITH MP: We should not be in favour of government simply for its own sake. Equally, we should never abdicate our responsibility to market forces. In the modern world you simply can't leave everything to the market, anymore than you can leave everything to the state. And the political debate in Britain has be bedeviled for too long by simplistic arguments and false choices between these two extremes. For the truth, and we all know it is that we need both dynamatic markets and active government. For years we've conducted a largely sterile debate about the ownership of industry and services as if privatisation and nationalisation are the only conceivable choices in economic policy. Well in the Labour Party we see clearly the merits of the mixed economy and the need for an active and creative partnership between the public and private sectors, a partnership being explored by Labour councils all over the country. We also comprehend that in a world of multinational ownership of companies, the only truly national asset which we possess is the skills and accumulated knowledge of our own people. Ownership today is therefore largely irrelevant. As Neil Kinnock wisely observed, it is education and training that are the commanding heights of the modern economy. DIMBLEBY: In a speech clearly intended to revamp Labour's image, Mr Smith went on to redefine the role of the individual. SMITH: And in a very real sense democratic socialism in the modern world is a radical theory of citizenship in which access by all to the power of knowledge is the foundation of liberty. I want for this country a future that puts power back in the hands of our citizens, democratic power that has been taken from them by over centralised government, economic power that has been taken from them through Major's disastrous management of our country's wealth. The power of knowledge that has been diminished by botched education reforms, by lack of investment in skills and in training and by under-resourced colleges and universities. These are the powers I want to see restored to the citizens of our country because these are the enabling powers that give people real control over their own lives. DIMBLEBY: Reaction to that speech now from two
trenchant critics of political theatre, both influential commentators - Tony Howard of The Times and Andrew Neil, the Editor of The Sunday Times. Andrew, you took a meat cleaver to the Carlton Club speech of John Major earlier in the week. How do you mark this one? ANDREW NEIL: Well, let me continue in that vein, I mean it's just as if the Prime Minister got paid by cliche, he'd be a rich man, so would the leader of the Opposition. I would mark it about six out of ten, he's now reached the ideological position that Ian McCloud had reached in 1965, so I suppose that's progress of sorts. ANTHONY HOWARD: I thought as a performance it was better than that, I think John Smith is improving, he always had this terrible thing, you know, of putting his hands down his side of his trousers and swinging like a metronome. He's got rid of that to an extent, he's now using his right hand, if we can encourage him to use his left hand, he'll become a speaker. NEIL: This is the theatre critic of The Times speaking here you know. HOWARD: But I thought as a performance it was better than he's done before. DIMBLEBY: It's going to, of course, be poured over by insiders in the Party for coded messages, open signals and the rest. Do you think that that speech, given that it's going to be across the televison and radio news, it's going to be in the newspapers tomorrow, people are going to be commenting on it - is it going to give the public the impression that this is a new leader of a new party with a new image, Tony? HOWARD: Well, I think he's in some difficulty, I did, I must say, I may be unfair but I looked up his election manifesto which I think was published on April 30th and that was called I think "New Powers to Victory". This one today was called "A New Way Forward" so it's a sort of variation. Then he did a quite interesting thing at the Fabian Society in May and I didn't find anything really new beyond those two things he'd done before in this speech, in fact, I found rather less because he'd been rather braver on the previous occasions asking questions like, what is the right balance between universal and selective benefits? Got none of that today; got no stuff about the unions today; got no stuff about Clause Four today, except by implication. DIMBLEBY: Andrew. NEIL: I think it means almost nothing to the public at all, I think this just goes over the public's head beause they've got more important things to worry about, as did the Carlton Club speech because this was a coded speech for Labour's own audience, I mean, I think the merit of the speech is that it's part of an education process trying to drag the Labour Party into the 1990s. In a way he was seeking now to consolidate all the gains that Labour had made under Neil Kinnock in terms of modernising their policies, getting rid of the ideological baggage which had lost them four elections in a row. I mean that's fine, there's purpose to that and it's early years yet but I think what it hasn't done and there was no guidance in this speech at all, as to the direction that he now wants to take Labour. Given that he's established that it's going to be a modern social democratic party, alright, but what does that mean in terms of the radical policies that the country needs to make Labour distinctive, we didn't get that. DIMBLEBY: He did focus enormously on the individual, on the rights and the freedoms of the individual, without spelling out the difference in contra distinction to the collective but it was clearly a different emphasis from what people think... HOWARD: He said that on the 27th May, he said Labour must show we're on the side of the individual against vested interests.... DIMBLEBY: Well he's emphasising the point then. HOWARD: I know but it's not new... NEIL: I'd expect you to go back and read the files Tony. HOWARD: The trouble is that the speech has been overhyped, now Mr David Hill, I think he's called, you say a very resourceful fellow who is his own press secretary and he obviously worked deciduously yesterday afternoon selling it to Sunday papers saying this was the most important speech his leader had yet made. Okay, he did a good job but I'm just trying to say, look he wasn't saying very much new today that he hadn't said before. DIMBLEBY: What do you think...in the Party there are the traditionalists and there are the so-called modernisers and actually quite a fierce debate going on, as it were, between the Tony Blairs, I put that in inverted commas, and the Bryan Goulds, in inverted commas. What's this going to say to them, a plague on both of you or you're both in the House and we love you? NEIL: Well, I think that although there is a lot of coded language, in fact, Peter Walker could have made this speech five years ago actually and Harold Macmillan used to make speeches about this as well that we're not a laissez-faire party and we don't believe in full state control either (interruption)... there's a lot in John Major's speech that is not that different from the John Smith speech but although it was done in coded language in an attempt not to upset anybody or cause huge divisions in the Labour Party, there seems no doubt in my mind the review belonged to the social democratic wing of the Labour Party, the more centre left progressive wing rather than the left wing of the Party, you would be happier with John Smith, Mr Prescott will not be happy with this. DIMBLEBY: The modernisers will be much happier than he? NEIL: I think so. DIMBLEBY: I hesitate to say that he is not a moderniser because otherwise he'd be down my throat and it's not a fair description but the modernisers at least will.... NEIL: I would think so. HOWARD: I think they'll be reasonably happy but I think that the better distinction was made in an interesting article today by Alastair Campbell in the Sunday Telegraph of all places, he's the political editor of the Daily Mirror, and he said the divide is not between modernisers and traditionalists, it's between fanatics and long-gamers and I think up to now, Mr Smith has been regarded as somebody who sees it as a very long game and maybe the frantics I think they're called not fanatics - the frantics - will be pleased that he's a little bit in their direction. NEIL: Absolutely, I agree with that. DIMBLEBY: Would it be right to say that given we're a long way out still from an election, the jury has to be out on whether or not this does signal to the party, we have to have radical reforms if we're going to get there or we can do incremental changes that will help us achieve the victory given the state of the Tory Party? NEIL: The future of the Labour Party does not depend on it returning to some kind of Gaitskell-like consensus just on the centre left. This country needs radical policies, non-socialist but radical policies and the radicalism of the Labour Party, the jury is still out on that and John Smith with a small c is a very conservative man. HOWARD: But I think he's moved quickly because I think it was a set back for Labour when John Prescott and I think it was he invented this phrase, "Clintonisation" and this was, I think, a threat to the modernisers of the Labour Party and I think today he's tried to get the debate back on track away from the idea that we have to simply imitate the Democrats of the United States. DIMBLEBY: Both of you, thank you very much. ...oooOooo...