A speech that resonates in the West of Ireland

Neil Kinnock, who I wrote about last week, was one of the greatest speakers of his era. His career as leader of the British Labour Party was energised by his speaking ability. Those who hear him speak come away moved and inspired.

As one might expect of a Welsh man, he had – and has still at the age of 83 – a beautiful speaking voice. His speeches were always vivid, dramatic, and centred on the stories of people. His sense of timing was superb, with the key lines delivered with impact at just the right moment. He exuded energy. He said himself that he was a great enthuser, and if you heard him, you would indeed be enthused.

There were many great speeches in the course of his political life. On the night before the 1983 general election – an election Labour would be well beaten in – he delivered a famous speech about the consequences of a Thatcher victory. Called the ‘I warn you’ speech, because of the repeated use of that phrase to highlight his predictions of the negative consequences of a Thatcher victory, it was so powerful that it propelled him to the leadership of his party after the election.

In 1985, Kinnock relied once again on the power of his speech making. At the time, he was battling what was known as ‘The Militant Tendency’ within the Labour Party. This was a far-left group whose members had joined the Labour Party with the intention of taking it over from within, and in doing so turning it into a revolutionary rather than a democratic socialist party.

Kinnock was determined to stop them and his speech at the Labour Party Conference of that year was so powerful – and indeed furious – that one of his own MPs walked off the platform in protest at it.

That speech divided people within Labour. By contract, Kinnock’s speech at the start of the 1987 general election campaign united the party, and was one of the most powerful examples of how the spoken word can both explain something important and inspire people while doing it.

The context is vital. The speech took place in 1987. Margaret Thatcher had been in power for eight years and was seeking another term in office. During those eight years she had promoted the idea that the wellbeing of all was best advanced by maximising the freedom of the individual to make their own choices. She argued that the free market and the use of individual initiative was the best way to ultimately advance the common good. She portrayed the Labour Party as committed to socialism, which she characterised as well meaning but ultimately stifling to the individual, and damaging to everyone, as society became poorer and weaker. She argued that she was promoting freedom.

Kinnock needed to articulate an answer to this fundamental challenge. He needed to explain that freedom was his objective too, but that freedom was only attainable if someone had the means to achieve it.

In his speech, he addressed this by asking a question that was true for him as the son of a coal miner, but could also have been asked by any west of Ireland person in 1987. He said: “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is my wife, Glenys, the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?” 

He combined fury with poetry as he addressed that question, answering it by mocking what Thatcherites might have suggested as the answer: “Was it because all our predecessors were 'thick'? Did they lack talent - those people who could sing, and play, and recite and write poetry; those people who could make wonderful, beautiful things with their hands; those people who could dream dreams.” 

He didn’t let up, tackling head on the Thatcherite notion that if a person did not achieve then they must lack fibre or character. He asked: “Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven child bearings, were they weak? Those people who could stand with their backs and their legs straight and face the people who had control over their lives, the ones who owned their workplaces and tried to own them, and tell them, 'No. I won't take your orders.' Were they weak?” 

The ferocious mocking completed, he then actually answered his question by describing how he and his wife Glenys had got to university. They got there because, unlike the people who went before them, they were brought up in a warm and comfortable home, built by a Labour government. They went to a secondary school, developed as a result of reforms inspired by socialist thinking. And they could head off to university because it was free, and they could leave home without worry because they knew that if their parents became ill they would be cared for by the National Health Service created by a Labour government, and if they could no longer work, they would be supported by a welfare system funded through a collective social insurance.

Kinnock’s point was that the Labour Party – with its social achievements in government – gave people a platform to stand on. It was while standing on that platform that real and meaningful freedom could be achieved, and that this collective approach was the only basis for individual achievement, because otherwise achievement arises from inherited wealth and privilege and not, as Thatcher portrayed it, purely by individual initiative.

This speech was written with British working class people in mind, but it absolutely could be written about west of Ireland people from small tenant farms, who until the 1980s and 1990s, could not dream of heading off to university.

Kinnock’s argument in the speech was powerful, compelling, cogent. But it was for his delivery that people remember it. All in the audience recall being moved to tears as he described a world of opportunity and possibility that could only come about when people worked together. He denounced a world where only the strong would prosper, and dismissed as false the notion that anyone could make it if only they worked hard enough.

He concluded with this powerful passage: “I think of the youngsters I meet. Three, four, five years out of school. Never had a job. And they say to me ‘Do you think we'll ever work?’ They live in a free country, but they do not feel free. I think of the 55-year-old woman I meet who is waiting to go into hospital, her whole existence clouded by pain. She lives in a free country, but she does not feel free. I think of the young couple, two years married, living in Mam and Dad's front room because they can't get a home. They ask ‘Will we ever get a home of our own?’ They live in a free country, but they do not feel free.” 

 Kinnock did not win that election. But that speech was a winner, and deserves to be remembered and read long into the future.