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

Hi there, it's Alistair here and welcome back to The Rest is Perseverance, 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 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 doesn't. 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. 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. It's a bit pompous. Yeah, isn't it? Is it? Yeah, I mean, I like the word. It's a dictionary. Come on then, what's pompous about it? Well, it's a bit sort of, well, not pompous, pretentious would be a better word. Why is it pretentious? Well, it's a bit expecting too much. I mean, I like the word. Right. And I think the combination is very clever. Yeah. And I think it displays something more than just the sum of the two parts. That's exactly what it is. It deserves to be a bit pompous. It's clever, yeah. Yeah, it's clever. Thank you. Yeah. But you, well, thank you for that. It's a fabulous way. To start the interview, you bastard. But 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 day you were born. Do you? Because you've always been blind, do you feel maybe that's overstating it? 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? Did I contribute to it? How the hell did I get out of that? Hmm. And your word comes in very handy. 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 realized that other people could see. And do you think if somebody is born with vision, able to see, and then becomes blind, do you think that's harder? 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 are in the countryside, you'd have a better idea of the, the woodland in the distance, if you'd walk that path, or, you know, where the stream wasn't. You could bring it back, as you would do if you were flicking through a television. 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? 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. 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 us through that. Yeah, this is obviously really serious, because. I was only a 12, and I'd been wretchedly 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. Parents didn't have the choice. So you went to boarding school. It was a school for the blind. For the blind, yeah. But, you know, I loved my dad to bits. And when I was home, he worked incredible shifts. Morning. Afternoons and nights. And so when he was off, we used to walk and talk. And he'd left school at some unearthly age. 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. And what happened? He worked. 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 call it supervisor today. And he was working for the gas industry. It was nationalized while he was an employee there. But the attitude. The attitudes didn't change that much. It was a lesson to me about centrally run nationalized industries. And the health and safety was chronic. And he fell into a vap and was badly scalded and died after a month in hospital. I mean, that does rest with me. What was that month like for you? The abiding memory, I don't want to upset the listeners. But my abiding memory was of the smell of, you know, he'd been so badly burnt. And they tried to do early plastic surgery, but 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 it. But it's a sad story. But she'd had real problems. She'd had breast cancer when it was usually 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. What do you see in our politics more generally? What do I see? I see ephemeralism. I see people. I see people give up very easily. I see that we are in a social media era. I'm useless at it. You're brilliant at it. I'm really not. You are. No, I'm not. Oh, come on. You do the blasted podcast and all that goes with it. This is old-fashioned. This is like going back to the future. Well, it's social media. It's just two old men sitting in a nice studio blabbering. Well, you speak for yourself, mate. 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 don't know. Would I find that a challenge or would I just automatically fit? Would I find it? I think you would find somebody very, very good to do it for you. 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. This is. This is. Special advisors were great because they always knew that they were speaking, acting on my behalf. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you've got that. But I think you'd be fine with social media. And also, I think you've got a sort of humanity that a lot of politicians don't know. Yeah. What I wouldn't do is the Great North Run. You know, Andy Burnham, as we speak, has just done the Great North Run. And I think, oh, God, help me. I'd rather be whipped than run hard. Off a marathon. I've done it. I've done it 12 times. I know, but you're clever. You've got. You've got perseverance. 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? Well, it's a two-way street, isn't it? I mean, the way we treat each other. Yeah. And the way we are treated makes a difference to whether people can stick it out. We don't want. Picking up your perseverance is a future word in the Oxford English Dictionary. It has to happen, David. It's got to happen. Will you be the first to use it in Parliament? That would be a good thing. I will. Well, I shall make a note of it. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I think that in politics, we've got to have a reset. I know people use the word. 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. institutions who are insensitive uncommunitive who will just everything bounces off them 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 which were the worst setbacks in your political career that made you feel you had to dig deep into yourself 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 you uh for contact and responsibility for my very small son uh who is just coming up to 24 uh now and who thank god has come through it all and that was horrendous because i was losing someone um 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 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 uh 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 um now if every doctor had the time to make a patient a cup of tea wouldn't they have to make a cup of tea wouldn't that be a wonderful health service 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 yeah for sure tell me about the role of how many dogs have you had in your life how many dogs have you had now i've had seven i thought we'd get done to dogs i've had seven yeah um this one is a cross between a german shepherd and a gola and trevor although he's black and all the puppies were black so the shepherd the mum must have been uh pretty pretty uh overwhelming um and he's 10 and he's a fantastic dog absolutely superb have you can you have you got memories and a sense of all of them different everyone different what's it like building the relationship with a dog 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 um but the dog will drag you into a butcher well not exactly it's apocryphal guide you yeah yeah yeah guide me not drag me i don't need dragging into a butcher's by the way because i'm i'm not vegetarian so that's fine right back to the sensible question this is a sensible question i want to talk about your dogs because i think that i think it must be you this you can't function without the dog well you can function but you can't function as well no other people do some people with a white cane yeah 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 yeah and i had this tremendous accident a couple of years ago um where i i slipped between the platform and the train yeah and actually it obviously it was the the damage it did that was the main thing and the 25 weeks of going to outpatients but actually on that moment i felt a humiliation as well as pain 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 people presumably were incredibly helpful yeah i mean they they picked me up off the floor um and dusted me down i mean at that moment i didn't know quite how much damage i had done because you don't so i carried on going to i was going to a football match i was going to versus Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup. 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. Yeah. And was your thought for yourself, or were you thinking for the dog? I thought immediately, is the dog all right? He'd done what he was supposed to do. I'd 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 jump the gap, get on the underground, which he did. And then I didn't quite make it behind him. 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. So, you know, and you have to. You have to be sensitive to that. So when you said that you've had a horror of people surrounding you and feeling pity for you, was that a. Is that stuck with you because that was a rare feeling, the sense that other people felt pity for you? Well, sometimes 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 program years and years ago called Does He Take Sugar? Yeah. More presciently. I've had. When I was a youngster, I did hear. This is more cruelty than anything else, where I heard a mother say, we'll cross the road because there's a blind boy coming. And that's bound to hurt, isn't it? I mean, that's bound to get you. That's not pity, though. That's nastiness. No, that's a misunderstanding about blindness. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Well, I think 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. Well, I'm glad about that. Because I think for a lot of people, it probably is. 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 contribution to youngsters growing up, to their parents, to employers. That's what I can do best. And if I became the spokesperson, firstly, why would I? Why should I? And secondly, actually, 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 involved in this. And we all have some sort of thing in our lives that require change and improvement and understanding, don't we? Yeah, we do. We do. I know this is like asking, are you your favourite kid? Have you got a favourite dog out of the seven? Well, they're all different. Very, very different. You loved Sadie, though, didn't you? Yeah, but she was a kind of magisterial dog. Sort of, you know, nose in the air a bit. Who's the most Percivalian dog you've had? 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. Labradors are food crazy. I found her upside down in the outside bin one day. Took two days to get her out. 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, 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 going to do it. I'm going to do it 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 side without actually having to put his paws up, you know. Well, listen, as ever, lovely to talk to you. Lovely to have Barley. Barley's now asleep. Yeah, and it's a great shame to have to wake him up. But every good thing comes to an end. Including this interview. When I've waffled on a bit, sleep is a great thing. Yeah, it's so cute, though. So thank you to the audience for sticking with us. That's perseverance. thank you david you've so got the word even if it is pompous and pretentious you yeah hey five foot eleven go well thank you thank you hi it's alistair here if you're enjoying the interview do please sign up at the rest is politics.com to hear the whole thing you can also hear other trip plus exclusive interviews with extraordinary people including one of my favorite interviews with mp kim ledbeater who's sister joe cox was murdered during the 2016 brexit campaign alongside my lifelong friend lindsey 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 the rest is politics.com hi there it's alistair here and this is a mini series about my new word perseverance no not perseverance 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 it's a bit pompous that isn't it it's 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 ellie was diagnosed with the same form of blood cancer when she was nine years old and knowing that someone you love was murdered joe cox mp for batley and spenborough has died as a result of her injury joe was killed because of who she was 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 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 what we see when these horrific things happen is the true strength of human resilience and it is outstanding how can we build more perseverance both personally and in our politics i used to walk up that lane and breathe fresh air and think i'm still alive greek mythology pandora's box and all the terrible things fire hope is hard and hope is what's left at the bottom of the box so to kick things off rory will be interviewing me about my own story you're both a kind of tough guy and you're somebody who takes things unbelievably hard i don't know how we got through it to be honest so i don't care how i'm defined anymore yeah as you know i think you're going to 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 very good if you want to hear more about perseverance from people who i believe really have it head to the rest is politics.com and become a member today