David Blunkett on Blindness, Adversity and Why Politicians Give Up Too Easily

To hear the full episode, and the whole seires, sign up at therestispolitics.com This week, Alastair sits down with someone who – in his opinion – is the most persevilient person in politics, Sir David Blunkett. Blind since birth, he lost his father at the age of 12 and grew up in a very poor household. Despite this, he went on to become leader of Sheffield Council at 33, then MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, and a key architect of New Labour. You’ll hear how differently he experiences the world, not least in Westminster, why he thinks politics has before too ephemeral and why he never wants to be pitied. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Gabriela Gibbs Producer: India Dunkley Executive Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi there, it's Alistair here and welcome back to The Rest Is Persevilliance, the new trip series on my new word, not perseverance, not resilience, perseverance. It's the word the world needs now. And today, an interview with a man who sums it up for me as well as anybody that I know, that is David Blunkett. David was born blind, as most of you I'm sure already know, lost his dad when he was 12 in a horrific workplace accident, but he went on to become the country's youngest councillor, then leader of Sheffield Council at 33, then became an MP in Sheffield, and went on to become one of the best and most influential ministers in the new Labour government. You will hear how differently

• 0:44Speaker 00

  he experiences politics, not least in Westminster, but also just how he copes on a day-to-day basis, doing some of the most difficult jobs known to man or woman, and yet he does them brilliantly, not least thanks to his wonderful succession of guide dogs. Here's my conversation with David Blunkett, with his dog sitting at our feet.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  So David, my dictionary definition of perseverance, the ability of an individual, group or organisation to turn any situation, setback or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow, to advance and secure their core interests and beliefs.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  It's a bit pompous, that, isn't it?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I like the word.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  It's a dictionary. Come on, there was pompous about it.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Well, it's a bit sort of, well, not pompous, pretentious would be a better word.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Why is it pretentious?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's a bit expecting too much. I mean, I like the word.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  And I think the combination is very clever.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  And I think it displays something more than just the sum of the two parts.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  That's exactly what it deserves to be a bit pompous.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's clever. Thank you.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  But you, well, thank you for that. It's a fabulous way to start the interview, you bastard. The, but the, the point is, the reason why I wanted to talk to you for this series is because when I think about politics, you have that, the ability of an individual to turn any situation, setback or meaningful experience into positive opportunity, et cetera. You've devoted your whole life to the pursuit of your core values and beliefs, and you've done it with this incredible setback from life, from the, from the day you were born. Do you, do you, because you've always been blind, do you feel maybe that's overstating it?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  That, that bit I don't think about. Other things that have happened on the way, on the journey, you obviously do, you reflect on, could I have done something different? Was, did I contribute to it? How, how the hell did I get out of that? And, and your word comes in very handy. With, with not being able to see from birth, you kind of took it for granted. I mean, it took a bit before growing up and learning to speak and walk, you realised that other people could see.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  And do you, so do you think if somebody is born with vision, able to see, and then becomes blind, do you think that's harder?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Much harder, because you're overcoming the emotional trauma. You have the advantage of being able to reflect the picture in your mind of what you have seen. So if you, in the countryside, you'd have a better idea of the woodland in the distance if you'd walk that path, or, you know, where the stream wasn't. You, you could bring it back as you would do if you were flicking through a television, but, but it doesn't compensate, I think, for the fact that you've had to get over the loss of all that. So sometimes it's the loss, isn't it? Like bereavement, you've got a chapter in your book, haven't you, on bereavement?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's the loss, sometimes it's a missed opportunity, sometimes it's just life and you're just glad that you get through it.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  In addition to being born blind, you also were born into a family that had a lot of struggles, and, you know, quite a poor background, a very poor background. And then your dad had this just truly horrific accident which killed him. So talk, talk us through that.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, this is obviously really serious because when you're 12, and I'd been a retidly at a boarding school from the age of four, because that's how they managed disability, loss of sight in my case, in those days. You didn't have, the parents didn't have the choice, so you went to boarding school.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  And it was a school for the blind?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  For the blind, yeah. But, you know, I loved my dad to bits, and when I was home, he worked incredible shifts, mornings, afternoons and nights. And so when he was off, we used to walk and talk, and he'd left school at some unearthly age of, I mean, we're talking now way back. So he'd left school at 13, but he'd learnt geography and he'd learnt current affairs just by reading and listening. And he used to test me on capitals of the world. Of course, they've all changed their names now, but in those days, I loved it. I loved being with him and learning from him. So when he was killed in the works accident, it was absolutely devastating.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  And what, what happened?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  He worked, he, he was over the age of retirement and he'd stayed on to train others. He was a foreman, as they used to call it in those days. They, they call it supervisor today. And he was working for the gas industry. It was, it was nationalised while he was an employee there, but the attitudes didn't change that much. It was a lesson to me about centrally run, nationalised industries. And the health and safety was chronic. And he was, he fell into a vat and was badly scalded and died after a month in hospital. I mean, and that does rest with me.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  What was, what was that month like for you?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  The, the abiding memory, I don't want to upset the listeners, but my abiding memory was of the smell of, of, you know, he'd been so badly burnt and they'd tried to do early plastic surgery, but it was, it was hopeless. And his mind wandering, understandably. And the terrible, terrible trauma for my mother, because she'd been very unwell. And this is a sad story. I know people would like us to get back onto a bit of lighter stuff, but she, she'd had real problems. She'd had breast cancer when it was usually

• 7:01Speaker 01

  fatal and managed to live 27 years. And other things. And she'd been looking after my grandfather because the other siblings wouldn't do it. So it had been a rough, rough time for her.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  What do you see in our politics more generally?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  What do I see? I see ephemeralism. I see people give up very easily. I see that we are in a social media era. I'm, I'm useless at it. You're, you're brilliant at it.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  I'm really not.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  You are.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, you do the blasted podcast and all that goes with it.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  This is old fashioned. This is, this is like going back to the future.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Well.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  This is old fashioned. It's just two old men sitting in, sitting in a nice studio blathering.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  You speak for yourself, mate. But, no, you're good at social media, I'm not. So if I came into politics now, as a young person who couldn't see, I would, I'm, I don't know, would I find that a challenge or would I just automatically fit when I, when I found it?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  I think you would find somebody very, very good to do it for you.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so long as they did it with me. So long as they didn't, and this is happening, by the way, people working for folks who put things out, thinking they're doing a clever thing, rather than always, always, this is, my special advisors were great, because they always knew that they were speaking, acting on my behalf.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, as long as you've got that, but I, I think you'd be fine with social media. And also I think you've, you've got a sort of humanity that a lot of politicians don't have.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  What, what I wouldn't do is the Great North Run. You know, Andy Burnham's, as we speak, has just done the Great North Run. And I think, oh God, help me, I'd rather be whipped than run half a marathon.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  I've done it, I've done it 12 times.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  I know, but you're clever. You've got, you've got perseverance.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. But you've got, you've got barrels of perseverance. What do you think we can do to make modern politics and modern politicians more perseverant? Do you agree with me that there's something lacking?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Well, it's a two-way street, isn't it? I mean, the, the way we treat each other and the way we are treated makes a difference to whether people can stick it out. We don't want picking up your perseverance as a, a future word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Has to happen, David.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  It's got to.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Will you be the first to use it in the, in the, in Parliament? That'd be a good thing.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Oh, well, well, I'll make, I shall make a note of it.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Excellent.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that in politics, we've got to have a, a reset. I know that people use the word, but we've got to say to each other, we treat each other better, we set examples, but we also say to the world outside, if you want politicians who are insensitive, uncommunitive, who will ju- just, everything bounces off them.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Then carry on the way we are at the moment. But if you want people who do have that empathy and emotion, but they're also perseverance in the sense that all the knocks and all the mistakes and all the sometimes tragedies, they'll keep going because they have values and they want to do something and they want to carry on doing it. We can do that together.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Which were the worst setbacks in your political career that made you feel you had to dig deep into yourself?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, the the time I resigned as Home Secretary, because I was, I mean, without going into the detail, I was fighting, as you know, I was fighting for for contact and responsibility for my very small son, who is just coming up to 24 now, and who, thank God, has come through it all. And that was horrendous, because I was losing someone who I thought I loved. I was losing my son, or at least there was a potential to do so. And I was losing what I really valued most, which was being in the Cabinet and being able to really make a difference. So that was a moment in time. And you know what happened?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  My now wife, Margaret, I went into the the surgery. She wasn't my doctor, better make that clear, because the GMC don't like these things. But I went into the surgery and she was the one on duty. And for the first and only time in my life, she took one look at me and said, I'll make you a cup of tea. Now, if every doctor had the time to make a patient a cup of tea, wouldn't that be a wonderful health service?

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  And that was a stepping stone, by the way, to pulling around, because small gestures of humanity, as well as my close family and wonderful friends, they they saw me through. So perseverance doesn't just depend on what's inside you, although that is pretty crucial, whether you've got that tenacity. But it actually also depends on other people around you.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Tell me about the role of, how many dogs have you had now?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  I've had seven. I thought we'd get done to dogs. I've had seven.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Um, this one is a cross between a German Shepherd and a Golar Entreever, although he's black and all the puppies were black. So the Shepherd, the mum must have been pretty overwhelming. And he's 10, and he's a fantastic dog, absolutely superb.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Have you, can you, have you got memories in a sense of all of them?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, all very different, everyone different.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  And what's it like, what's it like building the relationship with a dog?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Takes time, some months before the dog's in tune and can almost anticipate what is expected of you. You've got to know where you're going, because sometimes they anticipate you're going into a shop that you're not going into. I mean, all dogs love butchers, for instance. They just do. But

• 13:19Speaker 00

  So the dog will drag you into a butcher?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Well, not exactly. It's apocryphal.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Guide you, guide you, okay.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, guide me, not drag me. I don't need dragging into a butcher's, by the way, because I'm not vegetarian. So that's fine. Right, back to the sensible question that you asked me.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  This is a sensible question. I want to talk about your dogs, because I think that, I think it must be, this, you can't function without the dog. Well, you can function, but you can't function as well.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  No, other people do. Some people with a white cane are fantastic. And I have nothing but admiration for those who manage the Underground in London, because it's a nightmare. I mean, whether you've got a dog or not, it is a nightmare.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  And I had this horrendous accident a couple of years ago, where I slipped between the platform and the train.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And actually, it obviously was the the damage it did that was the main thing in the 25 weeks of going to outpatient. But actually, on that moment, I felt humiliation as well as pain.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Because I thought, God help me, you know, I don't ever want to be in a position where people think, oh, poor sod, you know.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  People presumably were incredibly helpful.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they they picked me up off the floor and dusted me down. I mean, at that moment, I didn't know quite how much damage I had done.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Because you don't. So I carried on going to, I was going to a football match. I was going to Brentford versus Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Brentford were, and still are in the Premier League. And when I got there, the chairman of Brentford got their team doctor to come and see me. So that was great.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And was your thought for yourself, or you thinking of the dog?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I thought immediately, is the dog all right? He'd done what he was supposed to do. I dropped the handle of the harness. And so I just had the lead. And I told him there's a command, which is hop up, which means get up, get, jump the gap, get on the on the Underground, which he did. And then I didn't quite make it behind him.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And of course, the dog was desperate. I mean, he thought, I think in his dog head, that he'd done something wrong. So he laid on the floor afraid in case he'd done something terribly wrong. Of course, it wasn't the dog's fault at all.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  So, you know, and you have to be sensitive to that.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  So when you said that you've had a horror of people surrounding you and feeling pity for you, was that a, has that stuck with you because that was a rare feeling, the sense that other people felt pity for you?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes it's, it's just funny. When I was young with my mum, people would say to her, does he take, literally, does he take sugar? There was a programme.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Years and years ago.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Does he take sugar?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Does he take sugar?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  More more presciently, I've had, when I was a youngster, I did hear, this is more cruelty than than than than anything else, where I heard a mother say, we'll cross the road because there's a blind boy coming. And that, that's bound to hurt, isn't it? I mean, that's bound to to get you.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  That's not pity, though, that's an asthmus.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  That's, that's a misunderstanding about blindness.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Um, pity, I've been so robust and so belligerent and pig headed, it's been quite hard to pity me, hasn't it? Really, over the years.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I think you're great, you're amazing. One of the reasons you're such an extraordinary character is that, I mean, I don't, your blindness isn't the first thing I think of when I think of you.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad about that.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Whereas I think for a lot of people, it probably is.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I never wanted the blindness to be uppermost. You know, people in the disability sphere, campaigners, sometimes, not very often, used to say, why aren't you campaigning on disability issues? I said, I am. I'm delivering an example of how someone with a defined disability can do a job at the highest level. That's my, that's my contribution to youngsters growing up, to their parents, to employers. That's what I can do best. And if I became the spokesperson, firstly, I, I, why would I? Why should I? And secondly, actually,

• 17:57Speaker 01

  it lifts it off other people's shoulders. I used to say to the team, when I had responsibility for disability issues in the first four years of the Blair government, I used to say to everybody, it's your job, not mine. You know, we're all, we're all involved in this.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And we all have some sort of thing in our lives that require change and improvement and understanding, don't we?

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, we do, we do. I know this is like asking the favourite kid, but have you got a favourite dog out of the seven?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Well, they're all different, very, very different.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  You loved Sadie, though, didn't you?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but she was a kind of magisterial dog, sort of, you know, nose in the air a bit.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  Who's the most perseverant dog you've had?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Uh, this one, because he's an all rounder. The daftest dog I had was called Ruby. She was my first dog. She was a pedigree Labrador. Labrador's a food crazy. I found her upside down in the outside bin one day. Took two days to get the gas out of her. I mean, why I had a second dog, I do not know. They've all since then been brilliantly trained, I ought to add, and this one in particular. But they are different. My previous one, who sadly died of liver cancer, Cosby, was, he had this sort of way about him where we'd go out in the morning and he'd say, I don't really want to do this. And I'd say to him, you're going to do it, Cosby. He'd say, well, all right then, but I'm, I'm going

• 19:22Speaker 01

  to do a bit slowly today, you know, sort of. And he weighed 46 kilos, so he was a massive dog. He could pick things up off the kitchen, off the kitchen side without actually having to put his paws up, you know.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Oh. Well, listen, as ever, loved to talk to you, loved to have Bali. Bali's now asleep.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a great shame to have to wake him up, but

• 19:44Speaker 00

  But you're going to.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Every good thing comes to an end. And, you know,

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Including this interview.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  When I've waffled on a bit, sleep is a great thing for him.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, so cute, though.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  So thank you to the audience for sticking with us. That's perseverance.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Thank you, David. You've so got the word. Even if it is pompous and pretentious, you, yeah, eh, five foot eleven.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Go well.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Hi, it's Alistair here. If you're enjoying the interview, do please sign up at therestispolitics.com to hear the whole thing. You can also hear other trip plus exclusive interviews with extraordinary people, including one of my favourite interviews with MP Kim Ledbita, whose sister Jo Cox was murdered during the 2016 Brexit campaign, alongside my lifelong friend Lindsay Nicholson, who's lost both her husband, my best friend John, and her daughter Ellie. Both women, who despite suffering unbelievable loss, are some of the brightest, most positive and inspiring people I know. All that and more at therestispolitics.com. Hi there, it's Alistair here. And this is a mini series about my new word perseverance. No, not perseverance,

• 20:57Speaker 00

  not resilience, perseverance. It's how do you take everything that happens to you and turn it into an opportunity to move in the opposite direction, to move forward, not backwards?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  It's a bit pompous, that, isn't it?

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Is it? How do people overcome extraordinary challenges in life? 10 years ago, nine years ago, I was sat in a psychiatric hospital on the edge of life, and now I am here.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Ellie was diagnosed with the same form of blood cancer when she was nine years old.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  And knowing that someone you love was murdered. Jo Cox, MP for Batley in Spembro, has died as a result of her injuries. Jo was killed because of who she was.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  People said, why weren't you bitter? I said, you can't send bitterness like an email. All it does is corrode and erode you. It destroys you from inside.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  I'm becoming conscious of losing control of my own mind. And what does that feel like? I know this is an insane thought, but I thought I was going to be killed. How can you heal and grow from unimaginable trauma?

• 21:51Speaker 03

  What we see when these horrific things happen is the true strength of human resilience, and it is outstanding.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  How can we build more perseverance, both personally and in our politics?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I used to walk up that lane and breathe fresh air and think, I'm still alive.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Greek mythology, Pandora's box, and all the terrible things fire up. Hope is hard, and hope is what's left at the bottom of the box.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  So to kick things off, Rory will be interviewing me about my own story.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  You're both a kind of tough guy, and you're somebody who takes things unbelievably hard.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  I don't know how we got through it, to be honest. So I don't care how I'm defined anymore.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  As you know, I think young people get a very bad rep. I think the world is a pretty messy place and a complicated, difficult place. That's why I think it's the word the world needs now.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  If you want to hear more about perseverance from people who I believe really have it, head to therestispolitics.com and become a member today.