Baroness Williams' US influence

On Sunday 20 September Andrew Marr interviewed Baroness Williams.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Baroness Williams says that her parenting, her American experiences and an unlikely alliance with Lady Margaret Thatcher made her the political figure that she is today.

ANDREW MARR:

When Shirley Williams' political career took off, many people thought that she would become Britain's first woman Prime Minister. Well that was not to be, but she became a rare politician who was genuinely loved by people even outside her party. Or parties that should be. And now her memoir reveals that her private story was as fascinating and difficult as her public life.

Parliament was always her destiny. She grew up the daughter of the famous writer and peace campaigner, Vera Brittain. Her childhood home was the hub of every liberal reformist cause going. When first elected in 1964, she soon made her mark in an era when women in senior positions were few and far between, rising to become Education Secretary in the 70s. After Labour was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and lurched to the Left, she helped to found the SDP, which hoped to break the mould of British politics. It didn't and then merged to form today's Liberal Democrats. Through it all, the smiling, argumentative and - it has to be said - occasionally tousled face of Shirley Williams has shone through, and she's with me now. Welcome, Baroness Williams.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Welcome, Mr Marr. (laughs) I think of you as Andrew.

ANDREW MARR:

Here's an unfair question to start with, but a funny one which comes from your book. You recall early on meeting the first female MP ever, Lady Astor …

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Indeed.

ANDREW MARR:

… and she said to you, "What would you like to be?" and you said, "I'd like to be a politician". And she said, "Not with that hair".

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

She did. I've never forgotten it. I was very small, I was about 7, and my father had foolishly introduced me to her and she looked at me with complete contempt.

ANDREW MARR:

Now you were brought up in this very political world because your mother, Vera Brittain, was a peace campaigner, well-known writer; your father was a political scientist. You had politicians in and out of the house all the time. You really got an extraordinary early introduction to I suppose Left-ish political life?

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Being Left in a sort of deep tank, exactly, to gradually sort of absorb it all - yes. I think an awful lot of it was international. We saw Indians and South Africans all involved in the liberation struggle, so it wasn't just domestic British politics. A lot of it was international politics.

ANDREW MARR:

One of the things that really struck me about your book was how American you are in a sense. You spent a lot of time there first of all as a child, for three years during the war, and then you were back after university and you've been back and forth. Of course your second husband was American. Do you think you have been more influenced by America in many ways in your sort of political philosophy perhaps even than this country?

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Certainly, early on. I mean when I first went to America, and I went to Minnesota where most British evacuees went to the East coast, which was already pretty Anglicised in many ways. Minnesota wasn't a bit. It hated the whole idea of the war and being involved in it. And as a result what I encountered was a classless society. Not a raceless society - there was a very strong distinction between the races - but not between different social classes.

ANDREW MARR:

When you came back - on the trip back, a very dangerous trip back during the war - you were very nearly the victim of what was basically a gang rape by Portuguese sailors.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Correct. Yes.

ANDREW MARR:

And I was very, very struck by the way you described this. It seemed to have left remarkably little scar. You kind of almost not quite brushed it off, but you said that happened and then we moved on. You didn't think too much about it.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

With one error, with one piece hanging out there, which was essentially that I for a while was quite scared of men I didn't know. Even to the extent that I didn't want my father in the room with me on his own. I wanted my mother to be there. That lasted I suppose for about six months and I dealt with it by going for long walks on the Embankment with my dog. I mean …

ANDREW MARR:

During the Blitz.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Well the Blitz didn't worry me at all. What worried me was lonely men on the Embankment. But by learning how to deal with them - and there were people who'd expose themselves and would follow you and all the rest of it, but they weren't particularly dangerous - I got over it. I confronted it directly in that way and ceased to be scared. But that was the only way I could see to deal with it because I was completely imbued in the culture of total silence, a mafia culture. You would never talk about these things, especially not to adults, so I didn't.

ANDREW MARR:

And you mention among the adults your mother, Vera Brittain, an incredibly well-known figure - still now, of course, but even more so then for 'Testament of Youth' and her peacework. Quite difficult I think from your book, I got the impression, to be the daughter of a very driven, very public campaigning mother.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Two distinctions. I mean, first of all, it's fair to say that my mother was quite well-known through the war and then ceased to be well-known from the 50s and 60s. She once said to me that she thought she would be remembered - and I quote her words exactly - as "a niche North Midlands author". (Marr laughs) That's all she expected.

ANDREW MARR:

She did better than that.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Well because, frankly, because of the BBC television programme which suddenly rocketed her up to sort of complete literary stardom. And, amazingly, that star has never fallen. It's gone and on. Her book continues to sell widely and to inspire I think a whole generation of young people now who suddenly feel that war isn't worth it.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

But she was … When I was young, she was rather remote from me. Gradually in the war-time years and particularly after she took her stand against the mass bombing of Germany, I began to greatly admire her and then to love her. So it was a kind of late fruition …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Late flowering.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

… put it that way. Yuh.

ANDREW MARR:

When you went into the House of Commons, very few women there still, and …

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

23.

ANDREW MARR:

23 women. And you make the point that almost all politics seemed to happen in clubs - in bars and in clubs where women were not welcome.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Not only were not welcome. In some cases weren't allowed to be there. And I still remember walking through the basement of the Reform Club to get to a committee meeting of which I was actually the Chairman because I couldn't be allowed to cross the sacred portals across the bottom ground floor room. Yes, no it was very, it was very dominated by clubs. It still is and that's another distinction from the United States.

ANDREW MARR:

And Margaret Thatcher and you formed an unlikely early comradeship.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

(over) An unlikely alliance, yes.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Well she of course was never allowed to be a member of the Carlton Club, which was the crème de la crème of Conservative clubs, until she became Prime Minister. And it was really quite ludicrous and we slowly climbed out of it, but even now women aren't terribly welcome in the House of Commons club. I don't like the House of Commons terribly. I never have.

ANDREW MARR:

No.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

I've always found it an excessively exclusive place. And in my view, Andrew, it's got to change out of all recognition. It's a huge revolution waiting in the wings if we're going to save representative democracy. I feel as strongly as that.

ANDREW MARR:

The single thing which most surprised me about your autobiography was when you said that you felt you were never quite good enough. You had a radical lack of self-confidence when it came for going for the top job, the leader's job …

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

(over) Yes.

ANDREW MARR:

… challenging to become Leader of the Labour Party or Leader of the SDP. And you put that down very much to the break-up of your first marriage and the lack of support. And I wonder, because an awful lot of people have problems in politics …

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

(over) Oh yes. (laughs)

ANDREW MARR:

… and a lot of other people look at politics and think that's not for me. How important would it … How different would it have been had you had a absolutely secure partner who was saying "You're great" all the way through?

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

It would have been very different, but it's not the whole story. The other part of the story is that I was brought up, particularly by my father, to look at the leading figures in Labour politics as giants, as sort of quite remarkable people, whether it was Harold Wilson or Hugh Dalton or Herbert Morrison or whatever. These were great men, you know, and I looked up at these huge trees and thought here is this small sapling and I'll never be able to match them. So I think I did have a quite deep sense that I wasn't up to the job. That was part of the factors; and along with it then went the feeling that somebody who would say to me, "Yes, you are up to the job" - which my second husband Dick certainly would have done - wasn't there to say it. So there was nobody to counter my own, as you say, self-doubts at the highest level. I never doubted I could make the cabinet. That was easy. It was the next step to being the leader that I just didn't think I was up to.

ANDREW MARR:

And I must ask you because 1979 Labour was pretty much looking like it was on its knees and after that went to the Left and you helped found the SDP. What do you think of the state of the Labour Party now? Could this be curtains? Could this be the beginning of that radical shift to Liberal Democrats or liberal democracy that perhaps you thought was going to happen in the early 1980s?

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Two bits to that. One is I do want to reiterate that it was the decision by Labour to leave the European Union that was the absolute tipping point …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) That was the crucial thing, yeah.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

… because I felt it was crucial and I still do. Labour now, I think that they probably will actually do slightly better than most of the media suppose. There's still very little Tory echo north of the Trent and almost none when you get to Scotland, though there's been a change in Wales. And, therefore, I think Labour will not be destroyed by the next election, though they'll certainly be badly wounded. I think the question then is whether they can actually go back to thinking it through because what happened was when we were soaring, the sudden arrival of Tony Blair producing not Labour but a different creature called New Labour - new wine in old bottles, same labels but very different attitudes - actually saved them because in many ways Tony Blair was halfway between Labour and the traditional Conservatives. I don't think there'll be another Tony Blair in the wings and, therefore, I think Labour will probably begin to suffer quite badly from not being able to become other than what it was.

ANDREW MARR:

Peter Mandelson wooed you, didn't he? He tried to …

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

(over) He wooed me a bit.

ANDREW MARR:

… he tried to encourage you back into the Labour family.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Yes, he did. He gave me an expensive lunch once and never again.

ANDREW MARR:

Never again. And you wouldn't contemplate it ever again? You've made your final political move?

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

In the agenda for this conference, you will see three things which matter to me. One is civil liberties - absolutely 100% sound the Liberal Democrats on that issue, the whole lot of it, even the unpopular bits about prisoners and refugees. Secondly the environment - much further ahead, when you look at the agenda, than any other party. And, thirdly, of course PR, which is what has cheated us all the way through. But I'm still quite proud. I still think that keeping a steady one-fifth of the electorate against all the odds, against a system which is rigged the other way, is quite an impressive survival story and I have great belief the Liberal Democrats will come through. It'll just take longer than we thought.

ANDREW MARR:

Shirley Williams - successful survivor and comfortable where you are - thank you very much indeed.

SHIRLEY WILLIAMS:

Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a 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

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