YouSaid · the spoken record

Neil Kinnock

lines on the record
69
first
2026-01-19
most recent
2026-01-19
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “A lance had been on the front with Jack Jones when he was 19 in 1938. And I was up against this guy. And we had 74 votes each. So we made further speeches, we spun the coin. He went first. I went second. Extraordinarily, and I didn't know this. Of course, because I couldn't hear what he was saying. He attacked me. And I went in and made a speech about the need for a new District General Hospital, which continued. We got a health center from the Blair Brown government, a very comprehensive health center. It was after my day as Member of Parliament. But the need existed.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “His name was Lance Rogers. He was the miners' agent, and he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. That's how long ago it was.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, what happened was Venice was in the selection conference as the chairman of the Young Socialists. That's how young we were. And all my mates turned in, what do we do, Glenn? What do we do? What do we do? And she said, oh, let's get it over with. Let them go again. So they decided another 10 minutes speech and questions after that for each of us, myself and the guy I would have voted for had I not been running.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “coming in Yeah, and war veterans were by this time in their 60s, not old men, and full-blown war heroes who never talked about it. It was daunting. Yes, that's true.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “You can make a real substantial story out of the rhetorical gifts of Welsh people. And of course, it might be true, and it might be Hollywood coincidence. I've never been completely sure there is something different about Wales, which you will expect. The geography, the way in which by definition, smaller communities are created with their own intimacies, their own culture, their own identity, their own flamboyance or diffidence never deference. There are things that make up ready-made audiences, difficulties of contact, the topography isn't friendly to Travel, all those things mixed in, warp and weft, and you could philosophize about them for hours. And people do. They write PhDs about it, which I'm in danger of doing by an overlong answer.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, I think it's more a linkage of coincidence and convenience than anything that is organically Welsh. There are ways to demonstrate, Alistair and I have talked about this before, that there are characteristics of Welsh, the language, the sentence construction, the dependence on the oral tradition, the contribution made by non-conformist religion, the self-rule that was characteristic of the chapels, the way people learned the arts of democracy, negotiation advocacy. By that means, even when they'd left school at 11 years of age, you can put all that together and throw in a little bit of nostalgia and set it to music and you've got a wonderful opera.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yes, and did it alongside being a poet of politics, a rhetorical magician, and a very challenging and audacious figure. So he was a cavalier, really, and he did the Puritan job of the bureaucracy negotiation, slogging exchanges of creating this absolutely amazing edifice.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “He was representative of a whole culture class, location, geography, stratum in society, the whole thing. And he wasn't alone in that. James Griffithson, Ness Edwards, and other political figures were cherished, admired in some cases, adored simply because they were from where they were from and got to where they got. I mean, that was very significant. And in some senses, it does reflect, if not epitomize, the attitude of the people of Wales to being Welsh at the time.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The feelings of nation, certainly when I was growing up, were entirely cultural and were manifested most obviously graphically in relation to sport. I mean, the people of Wales have their heroes, which of course included, and they're in Bevan as probably the greatest hero, certainly in modern times.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Well, someone who goes to chapel frequently on a Sunday but tries to advertise their righteousness throughout the remainder of the week. My mother could spell righteousness backwards if she wanted her to, but she didn't have much time for it. And so consequently, she would very occasionally high days holidays if I was performing in chapelism, she would turn up. But she was rigorously Christian who didn't go to Chapel, which I challenged her once or twice on it. And she just told me it was absolutely nothing to do with me. And that ended the conversation with my mother.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, in the funny way she was, she was a Christian socialist, but because she had to work most Sundays as a district nurse and because she didn't really get on with very chapel people.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I mean, I read voraciously and I followed every sport that I could turn my eyes to. And I love chasing girls and I adored rock and roll and all that stuff. I never did any work at all until I got pathetically bad O-levels and realized that application wasn't something that simply applies to pain.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Went mad about that as well, not because they're against the cops, but because I would fare much better if I went to university first. And when I got admitted to the management apprenticeship scheme of the National Code Board, they went ballistic. I mean, they just, it was the worst breakdown in relations I ever had with my parents. And it lasted for weeks. The very idea that I would betray their concept of the future by even spending the few weeks that you did spend as part of the apprenticeship underground.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Lie Shorter has lie George Corley Lewis Boy School in Pingham is sought in some ways to emulate What they thought a public school was like. Hence the title given by Lloyd George in the years before, I think the First World War. But I was desperate to get out of school. I detested school until I got into the sixth form. And so I applied for everything that I thought would be acceptable and interesting to me, the army. And when my parents found out about that, they became very irritated, not because they were against the army, but because my mother said, when you go to university, you can join the army, you can join the TA, you can become an officer, but you get your degree first. Then I tried the Metropolitan Police Force because I just reached the minimum height. And when they found out about that, the letter of reply inviting me for an interview.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Because of a general resistance amongst aspiring parents to the idea of they a boy going underground, the phrase that I heard thousands of times because it was a horrible way of... Well, I'll give you a direct bit of evidence. I was desperate to get out of school. I was in a hyper creamed grammar school.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “And the late 40s, and then the 50s and beyond was full employment. It was a gigantic alteration. And of course, it doesn't just shift people's living standards. It completely alters the mentality in a very positive direction. That was evident in South Wales, even to a kid maybe eight to ten years of age because of parental and grandparents' reference to what was like before, often with a great deal of humor involved in it at the sheer hopelessness of the situation, then it was difficult not to understand this gigantic leap that had occurred in the wake of the war.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yes, that's right. My father was born in 1907, my mother in 1910. So you can understand what they endured. My mother left school at 16 in 1926 in the middle of the general strike, in which, of course, her father was involved. He was a coal miner. She left because they were totally penniless. And she therefore had to find not only a job, but somewhere to live. So instead of becoming the doctor which she wanted to be, she got a scholarship to the grammar school in Aberdeen in Glamorganshire. And instead of becoming the doctor, she became a nurse because that enabled her to go and live in the nursing home in Mirth Tydville. The huge change between the 20s.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Partly, my mother had two miscarriages. One before I was born and one when I was about two. So there wasn't an intention strictly to have a very tiny family, but that was part of the consideration. And I think typical of their generation, my mother was one of four children who survived. My grandmother had had nine pregnancies and four children survived into adulthood and my father was one of seven surviving children out of 11 pregnancies. They had been deprived, there's no doubt about that. They'd experienced the deepest direst poverty. And part of their limitation, like many others in their generation, arose from the fact they had worked out, like a lot of other people. That if you had fewer kids, there was no need to spread around the very limited income quite as much.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I had a wonderful childhood. I had the equivalent of a silver spoon as an only child with for most of my childhood, all of my childhood indeed from the age of about three, both parents working and with supportive grandparents and uncles and aunts stretching into the distance, all of whom were kindly and indulgent in the sense that they always treated me as a kind of equal, which is I didn't realize that I was immensely advantageous, very comforting. So all that was great. I mean, we never carried stuff like that. And I bought our first television when I was 15 out of various bits and pieces that I earned in various ways. So, you know, wealthy we weren't, poor we weren't either, and deprived is not a word you could ever apply to me.”

    2026-01-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 171. Neil Kinnock: A Labour Rebel’s Path To Power (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source