With Keir Starmer taking to the stage in Liverpool to deliver his leaders’ speech to party conference, LabourList has reflected on another keynote speech from conference past.
Tomorrow marks 40 years since Neil Kinnock delivered his speech to delegates hitting out at Militant over “impossible promises”.
In perhaps one of the most well-known conference speeches in British political history, Kinnock took aim at the Trotskyist factions that had infiltrated Labour and led the calls to make the party electable again after a dismal defeat under Michael Foot.
To mark the anniversary, LabourList interviewed Neil Kinnock about how the speech itself came to be, how he reacted to the response in the auditorium, and his thoughts on the speech’s legacy.
‘You couldn’t lead the party to defeat and not think it used up the prime of your life’
We start our conversation reflecting on that 1983 defeat, which saw the party plunge to its lowest number of MPs since the 1930s. Kinnock says three factors conspired to create a perfect storm for Labour; a split in the anti-Tory vote with the Social Democratic Party, the beginnings of an economic recovery (which proved to be a “false dawn”), and the Falklands War.
“Given the divisions of the Labour Party, which were catastrophic, and the desertions of the SDP, the self-indulgence of the ultra-left, we simply weren’t credible – despite the very courageous attempts of Michael Foot. So we were going to get beaten, and of course we were really shredded.”
Kinnock said he became leader “out of a sense of duty” and reflected: “If Tony Crosland hadn’t died, if Shirley Williams hadn’t deserted, if Tony Benn had not become messianic, I wouldn’t have even had to think about ruining my forties. There would have been people of talent, credibility, experience – any of whom could have provided effective leadership.”
Despite being often listed among MPs’ Labour heroes, Kinnock does reflect on his leadership of the party somewhat forlornly.
“You couldn’t lead the party with two election defeats, even though the last one was extremely narrow, and not think that it unnecessarily used up the prime of your life. It just wouldn’t be reasonable to think otherwise.
“We did a lot of constructive things in the process, and people say that I saved the Labour Party, though I think that the Labour Party did a lot to save itself – by eventually deciding that they wanted to win more than they wanted to talk. Making them realise that unless they were driven by the aspiration to do everything they could to convince the electorate and win, then politics was a hobby – and they would have been better at taking up fly-fishing.”
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‘I knew the package of policies wouldn’t appeal to 40% of the electorate in a million years’
By the 1980s, Militant and the ultra left had infiltrated councils across the country, particularly in Liverpool and London and, while there had been attempts to deal with the challenge they posed, Kinnock said those efforts had proved to be ineffectual.
“I knew that the constitution was wonderfully permissive, which I completely supported but was being abused, and I knew most of all that the package of policies couldn’t appeal to 40% of the electorate in a million years.”
Kinnock would have embarked on the efforts to unroot Militant sooner, had it not been for one thing – the miners’ strike.
“The lead-up to the strike, the strike itself, all the issues of abuse to human rights that it generated, and the aftermath of the strike just took two years out of our thinking and policy development.
“There would have been absolutely no point in me going after Militant in 1984 because we were in the middle of a strike – and the Labour movement was completely preoccupied by the miners’ strike, so nobody would have been listening or maybe the whole idea of dealing with people who were abusing the generosity of the constitution would have been rejected. I had to wait a whole bloody year.”
‘More chance of me riding a camel singing Dixie than calling a general strike’
Kinnock recounts one moment in the spring of 1985 that focused his mind on the need to hit back and root out Militant.
“The leading members of the council in Liverpool came to meet members of the shadow cabinet, notably Jack Cunningham – who was a local government shadow minister.
“They told me, in very direct terms, that if we would take advantage of the miners’ strike and call a national general strike, the workers’ response would dislodge the government. I listened to all that, and eventually I summed up by saying that this was a total fantasy – which demonstrated they had no comprehension of the British working class, none whatsoever. I said there’s more chance of me riding down Lime Street on a camel singing Dixie than there is of me making that call.
“I just knew I had to tell them which way was up – and I could only do it in front of the whole movement, so the only place to do that was at the Labour Party conference.”
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‘I got the bastards’
As conference approached, Militant-run Liverpool City Council passed an illegal unbalanced budget and bankruptcy loomed. Kinnock was heading back from the TUC Congress in Blackpool when he saw that the council had issued 90-day redundancy notices to workers.
“I got the train with Charles Clarke, who was my head of office – we were at Preston Station and there was a Liverpool Evening Post.
“I picked it up and the headline was about this move that the council had made to send out redundancy notices to its employees.
“I said to Charles: ‘I got the bastards. I got them, I got them. This is where it stops.’
“I knew what I wanted to say, but they made a neon-lit action that I could get the conference to relate to, which is what it did.”
‘It had to be said there and then, even if it meant we were out of work the next day’
So how much time went into preparing the actual words of one of the most quoted Labour conference speeches of the party’s history?
“I wrote it, as was my ridiculous habit, overnight. I never went to bed the night before the leaders’ speech anyway. My great intentions always were that it would be different next year, but it never was.
“My poor staff were taking down notes as I marched around the hotel room and then typing up. They stayed up through the night with me, listening to me preach.”
Kinnock said that any potential concern about how the speech might be received was overshadowed by the urgent need to challenge the ultra left and the crippling effect they were having on the party.
“As far as I was concerned, and my people were concerned, it had to be said there and then – even if it meant we were out of work the next day. It had to be done, because they were all people who loved the Labour Party, and they could see the party was approaching a great graveyard if we didn’t meet those changes. It didn’t matter what we did, as long as the right-wing press could fill the headlines with lurid tales about the extremities of the ultra left, whether in London or in Liverpool or anywhere.”
One question that did arise was how would those supportive of Kinnock respond to the speech, to which Kinnock admitted he was unsure.
“One of my team said: ‘Should we start the clapping?’, and I said: ‘No, don’t do that, because it would just be obvious. Whatever else happens, if there’s going to be applause, they’ve [the audience at conference] got to start it.’
Speaking to the country through the party
With any leaders’ speech, the speaker has a line to tread between speaking to the party and also to the wider public.
Kinnock said he always sought to talk to the country through the party in terms that could be understood and accepted by both audiences.
“The thing is that the emphasis on justice, freedom, common sense, decent living conditions, and environmental security were part of my body of beliefs anyway, and still are. I had no difficulty in conceiving what needed to be said, but like any sensible person, I had to fight for the right words.
“The only way of measuring the effect was that my standing went up after every conference speech – it then receded, but the tide did come in after every speech, which meant I was getting through at least at that time.”
When Heffer stormed off the stage
As Kinnock reached the part of the speech that dealt a body blow to Militant, the reaction was immediate in the hall, and even on the stage, as then MP for Liverpool Walton stormed off the stage in protest.
Kinnock recalled: “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric Heffer starting to move from my left. Because I had had previous experience of Eric asserting himself physically, or attempting to, I thought ‘Oh God, this guy’s not going to try and hit me, is he?’.
“I didn’t think it was likely, but it was going through my mind and wasn’t utterly impossible. I moved my feet, so that I would have been in a position to block him, and I did it consciously as I was speaking. But Eric just walked past me and stalked off the stage.”
‘Go on Neil, you got it right’
Kinnock got visibly choked up as he began talking about hearing his late wife, Glenys, cheering him on during the speech.
“When Hatton and his mate Tony Mulhearn started shouting, much of the conference started applauding and shouting.
“I heard Glenys from behind me, who hadn’t read the speech before. She didn’t know what I was going to say.
“She was sitting right behind me, two rows back, and I heard her saying: ‘Go on Neil, you got it right.’ She was clapping like mad.”
How Kinnock joined Labour two months early
Aside from the assault on the ultra left, the moment that must stick with any Labour member from the speech is how Kinnock says that he owed the Labour movement so much from childhood on.
He said in the speech: “I owe this party everything i have got – not the job, not being leader of the Labour Party, but every life chance that I have had since the time I was a child: the life chance of a comfortable home, with working parents, people who had jobs; the life chance of moving out of a pest and damp-infested set of rooms into a decent home, built by a labour council under a Labour government; the life chance of an education that went on for as long as I wanted to take it. Me and millions of others of my generation got all their chances from this movement.”
Kinnock said he joined the party two months before his 15th birthday, earlier than was allowed at the time – in part from repeatedly asking his ward secretary and county councillor to join.
“I was very lucky, I had a lovely family that were good convinced socialists and trade unions. We lived in Tradegar, which used to be a coal mining and steel town – our MP was Nye Bevan.
“By the time I was 12, I think it dawned on me that all the good things in our community were available because of collective effort and contribution, which made things better for individuals. Things that neither my family nor any other family could afford were available.”
Kinnock recounted a range of different community services available in his town at the time, including a cinema, theatre, swimming pool and dance hall – and even an event every winter called the ‘celebrity concert’ which saw stars like Joan Sutherland and Leon Gusens perform, funded through a small universal subscription-style model in the community.
“Because of that collective combination, the workmen’s hall could afford to pay Covent Garden fees, limousine transport and overnight stay in Newport.”
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‘The denunciation in some ways was the easy part’
While his 1985 speech may have marked an important turning point, Kinnock said that for him it only marked the start of a longer process.
“The way that we dealt with it was a much longer, much more arduous process of collecting credible evidence or setting up an inquiry, getting the inquiry to come to the right conclusions without interfering, and then holding hearings in the NEC.
“That was the testing bit, the denunciation in some ways was the easy part – I lost a night’s sleep, so what? That was just the start of the work that needed to go into it.”
‘The best bit of the speech was overshadowed by the Militant bit’
Looking back on how the speech has been remembered through the ages, Kinnock laments that the speech has been remembered “for the wrong reasons”.
“The earlier part of the speech, which is about the enabling state and defines democratic socialism’s attitude to the purpose of being in government, that was the best bit of the speech.
“But, of course, only the anoraks knew I’d even made it. It was completely overshadowed by the Militant bit.”
As our interview came to a close, one question was still on my mind: who is the Labour idol that this titan of the Labour movement looked towards in his formative years? The answer was a simple and yet obvious one: “Nye Bevan”.
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