Alan Johnson grew up in post-war London slums, marked by poverty and squalor.
His childhood home lacked basic amenities like electricity, hot water, and a proper toilet.
Transcript:
Alastair Campbell
You grew up in and what the difference is between the world you grew up in and the world today, what we wouldn't recognise about your childhood today.
Alan Johnson
So the world I grew up in was photographed by a famous photographer called Roger Main, who just had an exhibition at the Courtauld at a place called Southam Street in North Kensington, London West 10. Not Notting Hill. We never called that Notting Hill. Notting Hill was the posh end up where the Albert Hall was and places like that. Yeah, near where Rory lives. This was a poor area, always a poor area. Tragically, most recently defined by Grenfell Tower, because the slums we moved out of, they then built high-rise flats, one of which was Grenfell. So it was that bleak post-war world. There were slums everywhere. I mean, the government should have pulled these houses down. They were condemned as unfit for human habitation in the 1930s, and we were still living in them. And Roger Mayne captures the squalor of the outside. I described a squalor on the inside. What was the squalor? What was in the house? What wasn't in the house that people would take for granted today? Well, there was no electricity for a start. So I lived my first six years by gaslight. And a little guy used to come on a bicycle to light the gaslights out in the street. And our mother used to tell us it was the Sandman come to send us to sleep. So one room, then progressing to two rooms and finally three rooms as lots of people lived in. Multi-occupied basement and then three stories. No electricity, as I said, no hot water, no heating, no toilet, no bathroom, a butler sink on the landing in one place. But if you wanted to go to the toilet, we were on the top floor when we moved down to 149 Southam Street. You had to come down three stories, go down to the basement, out to the backyard, right at the back of which was this awful carsey that you didn't want to visit when the sun was shining, Nevermind in the middle of the night. And so buckets, you know, I suppose in posh houses, it would have been called something else, but we had buckets. And because you had to go down on that journey to empty the buckets, you didn't do it that often. (Time 0:01:30)
Absent Father, Struggling Mother
Johnson's father was abusive and absent, leaving when he was eight.
His mother, burdened by illness and poverty, died when he was 13.
Transcript:
Alan Johnson
And you mentioned your mum. Your dad sort of disappeared earlier. Yes. My poor mother. Well, my book is really the story of two amazing women who happened to be my mother and my sister. My father was feckless is probably a good word, but he also, worse than feckless, he came home drunk and used to beat my mother up. So I say in the book, and it's very true, my sister is two and a half years older than me. And he took a great responsibility for bringing me up because we started off as a two-parent family. Then we were a one-parent family when my father did a moonlight flit when I was eight. And then we were a no parent family. So my sister had a very important role in that.
Alastair Campbell
Because your mother died when you were 12.
Alan Johnson
She died when I was 13, just turned 13. But the happiest day of our lives, me and my sister say, is when our father left. And people say, well, that's a strange thing. Well, no, it's not. It's great if there's a happy family there. If your father has beaten up your mother and you hear it in those places, because the walls weren't very thick. There was, you know, at least one family on each floor, sometimes two, four stories. You heard it all in graphic detail. And he was an awful, very cruel man. And we were very pleased when he ran off with the barmaid from a pub called the Lads of the Village. (Time 0:04:30)
Sister as Guardian
Johnson's sister, Linda, became his guardian at 16 after their mother's death.
She fought for their rights, securing them a council flat.
Transcript:
Rory Stewart
And when you became like a public figure, never got in touch? No. Never? No, never. Do you feel good about that?
Alan Johnson
Are you just glad he's never been part of that? He means nothing to me. But my sister got in touch. But my sister was the heroine here. So she had fought battles with my father, stayed up to protect my mother when she got to about age of 10, cooked my Christmas dinner when she was eight and I was five. And he had gone off with his girlfriend over Christmas. My mum was in and out of hospital all the time. She had a condition called mitral stenosis, which first of all had to be diagnosed. It's the valve between the two chambers of the heart and it had to be cleared every so often. And in the end, she went, people still get it now. What's happened now is you can replace the mitral valve with a plastic version. She was one of the very early people who that was trialed on. They'd done it in America. And she was convinced by a heart surgeon at Hammersmith Hospital, which was a local hospital to us, but a great cardiac hospital, to have the operation. Not many people have had it, but you'll extend your life for 20 years. She died in the operation. So she shouldn't have been in those conditions. She had the misfortune to have married a feckless husband. So the tragedy, the hard life, people said to me, you had a hard life. I didn't have a hard life. (Time 0:05:44)
Neighborhood Crimes
Johnson's childhood neighborhood was also the site of the infamous Christie murders.
A racially motivated murder near his home remained unresolved.
Transcript:
Alan Johnson
And they got married and he took her back to where he came from. The other thing that the area I come from is famous for is Rillington Place. Number 10 Rillington Place was just around the corner to us where Christie killed all of those women.
Rory Stewart
Were they under the floorboards?
Alan Johnson
Under the floorboards in the wall. And it's also- Lovely area. It's also, yeah. State changes at a field day, don't they? And just to conclude this real life crime episode, Kelso Cochran was murdered on the corner of my street. Kelso Cochran, the Stephen Lawrence of his time, 1959, Bank Holiday Monday on the corner of the street. I tell the story in this boy, my mother had come round and seen these teddy boys. He was a West Indian carpenter coming back from Paddington Hospital. And they knifed him to death on the corner of our street. Suddenly there were cameras. Southam Street was famous. And it's still not resolved. No one was ever arrested for the murder of Kelso Cochran. (Time 0:08:56)
Early Career and Union Involvement
Johnson briefly pursued a music career, releasing a record at 16.
He then worked at Tesco and as a postman, becoming involved in the trade union.
Transcript:
Rory Stewart
Your sister married young. You married young as well, didn't you? You had three kids by no time. Yeah, my sister got married at 19, I think it was. I got married at 18, so I beat that. And then worked in a sorting office. Well, first I tried to be a rock and roll star, but I didn't want to spend much time on that.
Alan Johnson
I made a record when I was 16, all that. But then, so worked in Tesco's, Stacking Shelves. And then when I was 18, I joined the post office as a postman in Barnes, London, Southwest.
Rory Stewart
And did you have political views then? Yeah.
Alan Johnson
Same Mr. Carlin, who was this mentor to me, this great teacher. He introduced us to George Orwell, got us all reading Animal Farm, passing the book between our hinge-lidded desk to read a page each and then passing it on. And he explained the subtext. This is 1964, the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were going out into a world, a third of which population lived under communist rule. And he explained the subtext of Animal Farm and the Bolshevik Revolution and who the different characters were. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. I was always a reader. My mum dragged us to the Labrogrove Library as soon as we were old enough to turn a page. And I read so much Orwell very quickly. And he was a democratic socialist. And I decided very soon I was a democratic socialist, but always tempted down that route. (Time 0:16:50)
Communism and Orwell's Influence
The Communist Party was influential in the British trade union movement.
Orwell's writings warned Johnson against totalitarianism despite the appeal of worker's state.
Transcript:
Alastair Campbell
Can you take us back to this? Because it's something that Alistair doesn't want to talk about because he hates dissension within the left. So whenever I try to get him to talk about Trotskyites and the Communist Party and all something, he says, no, no, I don't want to talk about that. It's all too painful. I don't want to go there. Given it's now ancient history and it's not going to get everybody up and maybe it's a route into your book on Harold Wilson. Give us a bit of a sense of left wing politics in the 60s and 70s and what the spectrum was. Because I'm trying to understand, I mean, who is Tony Benn? Who's Jeremy Corbyn? What are Trotskyites? What are Stalinists? How did the Labour Party relate to communism? What was this whole story?
Alan Johnson
Well, well before that, before I could judge the Parliamentary Labor Party or what was happening in politics, I was into the trade union movement. So once I was a postman, very quickly I became a local representative and then became the branch chairman and then went to conferences and all of that. This is the UCW communications workers.
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
Alan Johnson
They were called the union of post office workers then. I had a great general secretary called Tom Jackson and all these with the big hand and we were in a seven week strike when I was 20 in 1971, which was very formative. That's when workers withdraw their labor already. It's nothing to do with coffee striking, but the Communist Party of Great Britain were very influential in the trade union movement. And these were great characters, I have to say. In my union, a guy called Morris Stiles, of hammer and sickle tattooed onto his chest. They believed in something fundamental and they lived by their beliefs. Dear old Morris would give his money away and lived in a place in Brixton that could have been furnished better than it was. And he was a full-time union by then. And this idea of a worker's state appeals to a worker who's seen what the capitalist state can do, if you like, to some of the issues about my mother's life. But there was always Orwell holding me back. I was never attracted to the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat, which is dictatorship. This idea, the more you read about it, the reason you disagree and why so many working people disagree is false consciousness. And I put that down to Orwell. I put that down to him. He died before I was born. But you can learn a lot as an autodidactic that stands you in good stead. And of course, Tom Jackson and people like him, the main story of the trade union movement were people who stood against that and stood for the Labour Party. (Time 0:18:32)
Wilson's Religious Influence
Wilson's politics were rooted in nonconformist religion, shaping his socialist views.
Johnson chose to write about Wilson due to his significant impact on his upbringing and British society.
Transcript:
Alan Johnson
And actually, that does bring us straight to Wilson because Wilson's politics were forged in nonconformist congregational religion, Methodism, really. Why Wilson? Why did you choose to write about Harold Wilson?
Alastair Campbell
And maybe remind younger listeners a bit about why they should be interested in Harold Wilson. Like you two, yeah.
Rory Stewart
Well. Thanks, I'm not even.
Alan Johnson
What year were you born? I'm 67. Yeah, so that means. 1957. 57. Okay. So I can- All right. You were seven when Wilson was elected. Yeah, but I was very, very precaution. I'm being nice to you, Alistair. Yeah. Well, like you, Rory, who weren't around at the time. Why Wilson? Because Swift Press, who should be commended, by the way, they realized that there was a lot of interest in prime ministers, mainly because they'd been six in a fortnight, wherever It was. But if you wanted to know about Gladstone or Churchill, you had to pick up a volume that's like 1,500 pages and doorstep. And Penguin had been running this series of great monarchs, condensed 30,000 words, and they thought it's time to do it with prime ministers. First one was out in July about Winston Churchill. This is the second. And I was given the choice. Do you want to do Callaghan or do you want to do Wilson? And I wanted to do Wilson. He was so much a part of me growing up. (Time 0:22:30)
Parliamentary Shift
Wilson's Parliament was largely composed of individuals with wartime experience.
There was a shift in societal attitudes towards class and politics, mirrored by changes in cricket.
Transcript:
Alastair Campbell
As you've researched him, politics has changed from the parliament that Wilson entered and the parliament that you left? What happened over that period?
Alan Johnson
Well, I think there were two big differences. Wilson's parliament mainly consisted of people that had been through the war in the military, in some capacity or other. Wilson would have gone and fought. In fact, it was Hugh Gaisgill, funny enough, who became his kind of nemesis, who was a senior civil servant in wartime. He said, we shouldn't lose all this talent the same way as we did in the First World War. They had a very recent example and kind of engineered that he would never be called up. But anyway, most of the MPs there had done things and been through things. And there was an ideological reaction of anti-fascism because Stalin was our ally during the war. There was not so much of a kind of feeling that communism was a bad thing. And there were people like Wilson who was saying, whatever you think of communism, Russia's a big power and we need to have more trade with them and all of that. I think there were fewer women. I mean, Barbara Castle was one of only 26 women who came in. 24 of them were on Labour's benches, by the way, in the 1945 election. (Time 0:28:58)
Wilson's Controversial Associations
Despite his positive qualities, Wilson surrounded himself with controversial figures.
These associations led to scandals like the Lavender List.
Transcript:
Rory Stewart
Old Etonians. That was really in reaction to Wilson. You and I hear Piers sort of saying nice things about him, but he was incredibly controversial as well. What would you say were the less attractive sides to his record and his politics?
Alan Johnson
Someone said, and I forget who said it, that he had a real predilection to surround himself with very rich, powerful men. And he did. There's no doubt about that. That kind of came out eventually in the famous lavenderender List. If you look at the scandals attached to Wilson, there's Marcia, who we might come back to. There's devaluation, and there's the Lavender List. And (Time 0:32:40)
Lavender List Scandals
Wilson's Lavender List included figures like Joseph Kagan, who later served time for tax evasion.
Another recipient committed suicide amid financial investigations.
Transcript:
Alastair Campbell
The dodgy people he gave.
Alan Johnson
So he gave a peerist to Lord Kagan, Joseph Kagan, who made the Gannix raincoat that no one knows what the Gannix raincoat now was, but Wilson wore it. If you look at a picture of Wilson, you see him in a Gannick's raincoat. It's a different type of material made close to his constituency. He was great friends with Kagan. Kagan and when he, on his resignation, I mean, the stupid thing, as I say in the book, is that there's a resignation list for the Lords, but nevertheless, at least one prime minister has Put their hairdresser on it. He put his constituency agent on it. He put a number of other people who wouldn't be controversial, but he put Kagan on it.
Alastair Campbell
And Kagan was a little bit dubious.
Alan Johnson
A bit dubious. He was being examined then, but had not been arrested. It wasn't until 1980. This is 1976. It wasn't until 1980 that he served time for dodging the inland revenue. There was another character on there who two years later, or just about two years later, committed suicide while he was under investigation for financial irregularities. (Time 0:34:00)
Political Paranoia in the 70s
The 1970s British political landscape was rife with scandals and paranoia.
Wilson's behavior, including odd habits, was attributed to paranoia and early dementia.
Transcript:
Alastair Campbell
And I'm kind of just sort of trying to get my head around this. But in the 70s, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems, there's some pretty strange stuff. Conservative chancellors getting up to strange financial business after they leave. Liberal leaders, famous murdering people. I mean, what's going on in the... I think they murder him.
Alan Johnson
Hang on. I mean, he's dead. You can't lay me dead. A point here, a point of order. Well, this is the paranoia. So I say with Wilson and the stuff that you see about him going into the gentleman's toilets and turning on all the water in the House of Commons before he'd have a chat with someone, I say It was late stage paranoia meets early stage dementia. His late stage paranoia, I say in the book, he was a man who was paranoid, but had a lot to be paranoid about. MI5 opened a file on him in 1945, called him Norman John Worthington, because he went to Russia a couple of times. This is the kind of world we were living in. There was other incidents. By the time it came to the 70s, which is the most recent period for you, Rory, here, the world had gone absolutely wacky. He came back into power in 74. There were all these Colonel Blimps, retired military men, one of whom, Wallace, Walter Wallace, who was a very senior, wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying maybe people have Had enough of democracy by the ballot box. Maybe they'd like to see a bit of order restored through, he didn't use the term barrel of a gun, but that's what he meant. At the same time, you had the CIA described by a Senate committee as rogue elephants, still unclear who authorised the attempt to assassinate Castro. In England. And because Wilson had refused to send troops, British troops to Vietnam, he was a kind of candidate to be discredited. And you had Boss, the South African Secret Service, who were very active in London, responsible, so it's said, for the guy who attempted assassination on Jeremy Thorpe's lover, story We all know about now for a very English scandal. (Time 0:35:03)
Wilson's Legacy
Johnson finds it hard to rank Wilson among Labour leaders, given his personal involvement with Blair's government.
He acknowledges Wilson's significant social reforms, like divorce law reform and decriminalizing homosexuality.
Transcript:
Rory Stewart
Just put Wilson in your league table of Labour leaders through your lifetime. Who are you putting top?
Alan Johnson
That's really difficult. I have thought about this. That's really difficult because I was part of the Blair guy. I mean, the reason I have a political career at all is because of Tony Blair ringing me up and asking me if I was interested in being an MP, to which I said, don't be stupid. What would I want to do that for, Tony? I'm the General Secretary of the Sixth Biggest Affiliated Union. Anyway, he was persistent. So I can't judge Tony, And I was part of that government. I thought it was a great government. This is the 20th anniversary of my elevation to cabinet. You'd gone by then. But, you know, all of the stuff we were doing, I thought was tremendous. So can I judge Wilson against that? Can I judge Wilson against Attlee? Attlee was probably, people say Bevan was Wilson's mentor. I don't think Bevan, well, you have to say Bevan so that people don't get confused with Bevan. With Ernie. With Ernie. With Bevan and Bevan. Yeah. With Ernie, but I think it was more Attlee. It was Attlee who saw the talent of Wilson and projected him and promoted him and all the rest of it. And Wilson's youngest son, Giles, his godparents are Mr. And Mrs. Attlee or Mr. And Mrs. Attlee. So I find it impossible to judge. I think Wilson should be up there in the pantheon. I mean, I think he's a great prime minister. He was the youngest cabinet minister since 1806. Henry Petty was the last one who got in that young. His experience, the things he dealt with. My final point, and it's the things that meant a lot to people's lives, sorting out the divorce laws that meant my mother, even after she was abandoned, couldn't divorce. The men ruled on whether a wife could be divorced or not. It was Wilson that introduced the irretrievable breakdown. It was Wilson that legislated to ensure that homosexuality wasn't illegal. It was Wilson. I know Jenkins played his role, but Wilson was the prime minister, got rid of the backstreet abortionists, introduced a redundancy act, introduced a health and safety act, which stopped The carnage in British factories.
Rory Stewart
So I'm hearing Tony getting relegated to number two.
Alan Johnson
He's not, no, because he'll never be relegated in my view. So all I'm saying is he's difficult for me, but for someone who's neutral, who wasn't part of the Blair government, I think Wilson would be up there. (Time 0:38:00)
