This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/07/denis-healey-technicolor-politician-labour-chancellor
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| In a monochrome age, Denis Healey stood out as a Technicolor politician | In a monochrome age, Denis Healey stood out as a Technicolor politician |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| When BBC2 asked me a couple of years ago to make an obituary of Denis Healey, I decided to approach the matter gently with him. I had known him well over the years, and in 1989 had made a television portrait of him. When I rang him I didn’t at first mention the O-word but said the BBC had asked me to update my profile of him. “Oh,” he responded immediately, “you mean you are doing my obituary.” “You’ve got it in one, Denis,” I said. | When BBC2 asked me a couple of years ago to make an obituary of Denis Healey, I decided to approach the matter gently with him. I had known him well over the years, and in 1989 had made a television portrait of him. When I rang him I didn’t at first mention the O-word but said the BBC had asked me to update my profile of him. “Oh,” he responded immediately, “you mean you are doing my obituary.” “You’ve got it in one, Denis,” I said. |
| Related: Denis Healey: a towering figure in British politics and a joy to know | Related: Denis Healey: a towering figure in British politics and a joy to know |
| The first profile I had made of him began with him saying: “When I was a student communist at Oxford we would have debates about who would do the dirty work under socialism. I discovered in later life the answer was Denis Healey.” | The first profile I had made of him began with him saying: “When I was a student communist at Oxford we would have debates about who would do the dirty work under socialism. I discovered in later life the answer was Denis Healey.” |
| He was dead right. He spent his career in one long tribal battle with the hard left for the soul of the Labour party. One young activist who would regularly seek to shout Healey down was Jeremy, eponymous leader of the Corbynistas. | He was dead right. He spent his career in one long tribal battle with the hard left for the soul of the Labour party. One young activist who would regularly seek to shout Healey down was Jeremy, eponymous leader of the Corbynistas. |
| Healey himself was a lone wolf in politics. In a world of Gaitskellites, Bevanites, Jenkinsites and Bennites there had never been a major grouping of Healeyites. “I’ve been a loner in the sense that I’ve never tried to organise a group of people to achieve an objective for myself personally. I’ve never been a plotter.” “Denis wasn’t a schmoozer, he was an anti-schmoozer, said Shirley Williams. | Healey himself was a lone wolf in politics. In a world of Gaitskellites, Bevanites, Jenkinsites and Bennites there had never been a major grouping of Healeyites. “I’ve been a loner in the sense that I’ve never tried to organise a group of people to achieve an objective for myself personally. I’ve never been a plotter.” “Denis wasn’t a schmoozer, he was an anti-schmoozer, said Shirley Williams. |
| “I didn’t built a carapace around me,” said Healey, “but I have tried to preserve a personal life with my family and friends and a space for my love of poetry, music and literature. And the one thing I would never do is allow politics to destroy that space – because I think it would destroy me as a human being and I’ve seen politics destroy human beings.” | “I didn’t built a carapace around me,” said Healey, “but I have tried to preserve a personal life with my family and friends and a space for my love of poetry, music and literature. And the one thing I would never do is allow politics to destroy that space – because I think it would destroy me as a human being and I’ve seen politics destroy human beings.” |
| Healey lived in a substantial house with a glorious view over the South Downs in Sussex. When I arrived to film a last interview for his obituary, he was nearly 96 and had just finished his daily summer swim in his outdoor pool. “Every time I go in I reckon to do 20 lengths,” he told me. | Healey lived in a substantial house with a glorious view over the South Downs in Sussex. When I arrived to film a last interview for his obituary, he was nearly 96 and had just finished his daily summer swim in his outdoor pool. “Every time I go in I reckon to do 20 lengths,” he told me. |
| Healey was famously happily married to Edna, whom he had first met at Oxford in the late 1930s. They had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in the Sussex house. In 2010, soon after their anniversary celebrations, Edna died in her sleep. In a house filled with books, Healey found that the ones he would return to again and again for consolation were the poems. I asked which poets meant the most to him. “Well, Maggie Thatcher once said, ‘Every prime minister needs a Willie.’ She meant Willie Whitelaw but many people misunderstood her. I myself in politics have always had four Willies: William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth and William Butler Yeats. And each of them in my mind is absolutely wonderful and I learned a lot of them by heart.” | Healey was famously happily married to Edna, whom he had first met at Oxford in the late 1930s. They had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in the Sussex house. In 2010, soon after their anniversary celebrations, Edna died in her sleep. In a house filled with books, Healey found that the ones he would return to again and again for consolation were the poems. I asked which poets meant the most to him. “Well, Maggie Thatcher once said, ‘Every prime minister needs a Willie.’ She meant Willie Whitelaw but many people misunderstood her. I myself in politics have always had four Willies: William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth and William Butler Yeats. And each of them in my mind is absolutely wonderful and I learned a lot of them by heart.” |
| Related: Denis Healey 1917-2015: a life in pictures | Related: Denis Healey 1917-2015: a life in pictures |
| He had lost nothing of what a Labour minister, after Healey’s first speech to the party conference in 1945, had called his “marvellous gift for vituperation”. Thirty-one years later he had missed the chance of taking over as prime minister from Harold Wilson because, in the run-up to the leadership election, he’d become involved in a blazing row on the floor of the house with hard-left MPs. “What happened is that one of them cast doubt on my paternity so I praised his virility,” said Healey with masterly understatement. In fact, the leftwing MPs called Healey “a Stalinist bastard” and Healey yelled at them repeatedly, “You fuckers, you’re out of your tiny Chinese minds.” Healey claimed: “It didn’t in fact make me unpopular with the left of the party”, but I think it did scare a lot of middle-of-the-road MPs. | He had lost nothing of what a Labour minister, after Healey’s first speech to the party conference in 1945, had called his “marvellous gift for vituperation”. Thirty-one years later he had missed the chance of taking over as prime minister from Harold Wilson because, in the run-up to the leadership election, he’d become involved in a blazing row on the floor of the house with hard-left MPs. “What happened is that one of them cast doubt on my paternity so I praised his virility,” said Healey with masterly understatement. In fact, the leftwing MPs called Healey “a Stalinist bastard” and Healey yelled at them repeatedly, “You fuckers, you’re out of your tiny Chinese minds.” Healey claimed: “It didn’t in fact make me unpopular with the left of the party”, but I think it did scare a lot of middle-of-the-road MPs. |
| Healey kept a shelf of Spitting Image puppets as latex mementoes of his turbulent political life – among them Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and David Owen. As he picked up the Owen puppet and squeezed it to make it squeak, I quoted Owen’s view that when Healey stood for the Labour leadership in 1980 he “didn’t have the guts to take on the left wing of the party”. “That’s absolute bollocks,” snorted Healey. “David Owen was a very self-centred person. He was good-looking, he was intelligent, he had immense charm and all these presents were given to him by the good fairy and then the bad fairy came along and tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘… but you’ll be a shit.’” | Healey kept a shelf of Spitting Image puppets as latex mementoes of his turbulent political life – among them Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and David Owen. As he picked up the Owen puppet and squeezed it to make it squeak, I quoted Owen’s view that when Healey stood for the Labour leadership in 1980 he “didn’t have the guts to take on the left wing of the party”. “That’s absolute bollocks,” snorted Healey. “David Owen was a very self-centred person. He was good-looking, he was intelligent, he had immense charm and all these presents were given to him by the good fairy and then the bad fairy came along and tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘… but you’ll be a shit.’” |
| I asked Healey if he regretted the fact that he never became prime minister. “I do a little bit now. I never wanted to be prime minister at the time. I was in politics because I wanted to do something, rather than be something. But of course prime ministers have to do a hell of a lot as well as being a lot. And I wish now that I had gone on to No 10.” | |
| As we left his house after filming, Healey’s last words to me were: “Now you sod off and I’ll nod off.” | As we left his house after filming, Healey’s last words to me were: “Now you sod off and I’ll nod off.” |
| Healey had held many of the toughest jobs in politics and had helped save Britain from bankruptcy. In a monochrome age his special combination of brain and brawn made him stand out as a Technicolor politician. Often described as the best prime minister Labour never had, throughout Healey’s career his capacity to divide his party and country was greater than his ability to unite them. | Healey had held many of the toughest jobs in politics and had helped save Britain from bankruptcy. In a monochrome age his special combination of brain and brawn made him stand out as a Technicolor politician. Often described as the best prime minister Labour never had, throughout Healey’s career his capacity to divide his party and country was greater than his ability to unite them. |
| But he should be remembered not in a sad way, as the nearly man of British politics, but rather by a great “what if”: wouldn’t we have been in for a terrific helter-skelter ride if Denis Winston Healey had had a crack at the premiership? | But he should be remembered not in a sad way, as the nearly man of British politics, but rather by a great “what if”: wouldn’t we have been in for a terrific helter-skelter ride if Denis Winston Healey had had a crack at the premiership? |
| • Michael Cockerell’s film, Denis Healey: The Best Prime Minister Labour Never Had?, is on BBC2 tonight at 8pm | • Michael Cockerell’s film, Denis Healey: The Best Prime Minister Labour Never Had?, is on BBC2 tonight at 8pm |