Reflections

Conversations with Politicians Volume II

Peter Hennessy, Robert Shepherd

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781912208586
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Accompanying the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 program, Reflections features interviews with twelve of Britain's most influential political figures from the last twenty years. Presented by Peter Hennessy, one of the UK's most renowned historians, each interview not only offers an honest and frank assessment of a political career, but also acts as a biography filled with fresh insights and moments of new revelation. From one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers and three of the Conservative leaders who stood against him, to dominant figures of late Thatcherism, stalwarts of successive New Labour cabinets, and leaders of the Liberal Democrats, Hennessy brings his characteristic style to each encounter. The politicians included in this volume are: Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine, Vince Cable, Margaret Hodge, William Hague, Harriet Harman, Michael Howard, Paddy Ashdown, Sayeeda Warsi, David Blunkett, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Baker.  

Kenneth Baker
(Lord Baker of Dorking)

Series 4, Episode 4, first broadcast 23 August 2016

Born 3 November 1934; Educated King George V Grammar School, Southport; Hampton Grammar School; St Paul’s School; Magdalen College, Oxford

MP (Conservative) St Marylebone 1970–83; Mole Valley 1983–97

Parliamentary Secretary (Civil Service Department), 1972–74; Minister of State (Department of Industry), 1981–83; Minister of State (Industry & Information Technology), 1983–84; Minister of State for Local Government (Department of the Environment), 1984–85; Secretary of State for the Environment, 1985–86; Secretary of State for Education and Science, 1986–89; Chairman of the Conservative Party, 1989–90; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1989–90; Home Secretary, 1990–92

Autobiography The Turbulent Years, 1993

HENNESSY

With me today is Kenneth Baker, Lord Baker of Dorking. Ken Baker is a politician with a sense of history. During this extraordinary summer of high political drama, and abundant political haemorrhage, he told the House of Lords it possessed more than a whiff of the Middle Ages. ‘When a dynasty changed,’ he declared, ‘a new guard came in and the old guard went out and some poor wretch was executed in Pontefract Castle. The only difference today is that political assassination takes place in prime time in television studios.’ Ken Baker knows a great deal about political dynasties, having worked closely with three very different Prime Ministers: Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Perhaps his greatest personal mark was scored across the historical page by his core curriculum as Education Secretary in the late 1980s and the fires of educational reform still burn fiercely within him. Ken, welcome.

BAKER

Thank you very much.

HENNESSY

Let’s begin with your personal history. You were born in Newport.

BAKER

Yes.

HENNESSY

The Welsh borders. Was the influence of Wales powerful upon you?

BAKER

Not really. We moved from it when I was only five or six years old to London. And so I have very few recollections of Wales, but I had a Welsh grandfather who was a docker.

HENNESSY

Your grandfather, I think, worked in the docks at Newport and knew the great trade union leader Ben Tillett.

BAKER

Yes.

HENNESSY

Do you think that somewhere within your make-up your passion for technical education comes from that self-help, Workers’ Educational Association tradition?

BAKER

It might do. Yes. The Bakers rose through education. They thought education was really the most important thing in life and my father felt that because my grandfather was a docker. He was made the secretary of the dockers’ union because he was the one who had beautiful handwriting and kept the records. And he was actually offered a seat to stand in Parliament by Keir Hardie. But he couldn’t afford that, he’d got two young boys – three young boys, one died – two young boys and he didn’t do it. But he was a very active member. Though, at the end of his life, he ended up managing part of Newport docks during the Second World War.

HENNESSY

Do you think it’s given you some empathy for Labour? Why were you not an aristocrat of Labour yourself with a background like that?

BAKER

Yes I suppose there was a bit, really. And my father was sort of Conservative only on some days, other days he was certainly Labour. I remember him, after the War, explaining to me Stafford Cripps’ budgets and how necessary they were and that sort of thing.

HENNESSY

It’s quite interesting, it should be a balance because he was a career civil servant –

BAKER

Yes he was.

HENNESSY

– so part of him should be one and part of him the other.

BAKER

Yes he was.

HENNESSY

Ministry of Supply?

BAKER

Yes he was.

HENNESSY

What did he do in the Ministry of Supply?

BAKER

He was involved in supply, basically of foodstuffs, I think. And they went – the whole department was moved up to Liverpool during the war, so we were evacuated. And I was brought up in Southport where my father got a flat for us. And I had a very good education. I went to an ordinary primary, Church of England primary school. There was no field, there was a brickyard with brick walls around it, glass on top of it, which we used to climb and we’d try and chip the glass off. And we were taught in the very traditional, old-fashioned way, and it was the basis of my education.

HENNESSY

And then grammar school?

BAKER

I went to a grammar school in the north for a year, King George V, and I went to a grammar school in Middlesex, Hampton Grammar School, which is now a private school, for two years. They were excellent schools.

HENNESSY

Why on earth did you transfer to St Paul’s when you had such an excellent grammar school?

BAKER

Well you might well ask. Because one day my father said, ‘Do you want to go to St Paul’s?’ I said ‘Well it’s a church, isn’t it?’ I had never heard of the school. But he’d heard of it, and my father was a great sort of mover-on and he knew that going to that school might be better for me than going to a grammar school, that’s what he thought, so I didn’t take Common Entrance, I’d probably have failed that. I had to go along and write an essay for a teacher in St Paul’s on Shelley and do some sums, and they said, ‘You’re all right, you’re literate and numerate, you can join.’ And so I joined. And I was there for four years.

HENNESSY

Not rigorous testing by your subsequent standards was it?

BAKER

No. No not at all, no. But they knew talent when they saw it. [Both laugh]

HENNESSY

Do you think you’d have gone to Oxford if you’d stayed at Hampton Grammar School? You almost certainly would have done.

BAKER

I might have done or might not. I think the teacher I had in history, P D Whiting, was a very gifted man indeed. And he placed people in Oxford in those days. And he got me into Magdalen, I think. Because he knew I liked history and I think he thought I would do well at it.

HENNESSY

And of course Magdalen was just made for you because you had stunning teachers. You had the medievalist Bruce McFarlane, whose legend lives on, and the very famous A J P Taylor, the first telly don.

BAKER

Well I was very lucky. McFarlane was the creator of bastard feudalism, a great medievalist. A J P Taylor was another kettle of fish; a wonderful historian and he would sit with his cat in his lap and you’d go for an hour, as it were, and he was very good on general politics. And he also had a wonderful series of lectures on the First World War. And he gave them at nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning, in the examination halls. It was packed. And I went to him afterwards, I said, ‘Why didn’t you do it at 11 o’clock?’ He said there was no hall in Oxford big enough to take the audience who would come.

HENNESSY

Were you a fledgling Tory by this time?

BAKER

Sort of. What I did like, I liked debating. When I was at St Paul’s, John Adair and I created the public school debating society that led to the Observer Prize and all that sort of thing. I always liked debating and arguing and standing up and expressing my views. So I suppose that sort of attitude is generally quite good if you’re going to be a politician.

HENNESSY

But what made you a centre-right person rather than a centre-left?

BAKER

That is quite interesting actually.

HENNESSY

And when? What was the formation of that?

BAKER

I suppose it entered probably at Hampton Grammar School, and a bit later at St Paul’s. I felt that socialism at the beginning was far too controlled and restrictive; I gathered that from what I read about it in the papers. I didn’t want that. And I think reading J S Mill’s Liberty was one of the most important things that I read, actually. And that might have turned me into a Liberal, quite frankly, but it made me more of a Conservative. The elevation of the status of an individual in society is the thing that has, I think, dominated my political thinking.

HENNESSY

How old were you when you read Mill for the first time?

BAKER

I should think I was about 15 or 16, that sort of age.

HENNESSY

Now Alan Taylor was a man of the Left, did you have little clashes with him? Did he sense a Tory in the making in you?

BAKER

No, no he rather, he rather liked it. One of his great heroes is Charles James Fox.

HENNESSY

Yes.

BAKER

And I handed in an essay on Charles James Fox and he said, ‘Ah, what you haven’t realised, he was the first Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, though unrecognised.’ And ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Melvyn Bragg
• Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine)
• Vince Cable (Sir Vince Cable)
• Margaret Hodge (Dame Margaret Hodge)
• Kenneth Baker (Lord Baker of Dorking)
• Tony Blair
• William Hague (Lord Hague of Richmond)
• Harriet Harman
• Michael Howard (Lord Howard of Lympne)
• Paddy Ashdown (Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon)
• Sayeeda Warsi (Baroness Warsi)
• David Blunkett (Lord Blunkett)
• Iain Duncan Smith
• Picture Credits