Uncle Terry on the accordion, absolute legend. Thanks for uploading this. Remember going to see them play in Scarborough one summer probably’88. Great memory’s this .
It's interesting how economical Tony Benn was with the truth at times. He said "the left" decided to nominate him for deputy leader and he accepted their nomination, as if he was almost forced into - something Roy Hattersley described as Benn's"inappropriate piousness". In fact, Benn bizarrely announced his candidacy at 3 am one night and even his ally and former PPS, Joe Ashton, didn't know in advance. Ashton immediately went to see Benn to persuade him to stand down as he could foresee how damaging it would be, as indeed it was. Benn was also quite wrong about his performance in the deputy leadership race being a great achievement. In fact, the fortunes of the left faded sharply after that as the Party has become absolutely sick of the turmoil. That Benn subsequently lost his seat at the 1983 election was perhaps no surprise.
We have seen the results of the reforms Tony Benn championed in both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. A few thousand party members, usually with views quite detached from the public and with no democratic mandate, choosing the leader of the party and often the Prime Minister. The result has been Liz Truss, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. The old system where MPs chose the leader was better - we the public can remove them if we disagree with whom they choose. The public cannot hold the party members to account.
Tony Benn seems not to have been overly concerned by the Prime Minister's powers of patronage (or for that matter, parliamentary democracy) until he was demoted by Wilson in '75 to the job of Energy Secretary!
It's fascinating to listen to this.The British economy, it was subsequently found, wasn't in quite the dire state that was thought in '76. There was no actual need to go cap in hand to the IMF. By then, it was too late. Labour's economic credibility in Govt was undermined
I used to own these (I still own all of Tony Benn's published diaries). I can't think what became of them. I had forgotten until listening again to this, what a compelling document of the times they are.
It's interesting - you can hear the laughs repeating, but when I have it open in Audacity I can't quite find two that line up perfectly with each other. I wonder whether what's going on is that they've got somebody in the studio with a soundboard punching in laughter at the appropriate places, but they're layering different laughs over each other so that it doesn't sound too obvious.
I never tire of listening to Mr. Ustinov. His stories, his experiences are my "walking companions". The stories of his generation are by far the most interesting.
Hi Robert I'd like to have a copy of this, if possible, also does anyone have the lyrics of the song My heart overflows sung at Dales bible week by any chance
17:00 "Is this a very long story?" "Yes!" Love the dead pan delivery....although even Hoffnung breaks a delayed chuckle once he gets time to remember what he just said!
