The Right Honourable Alan Johnson is arguably one of the most respected politicians of recent times. From growing up an orphan in West London to holding senior Cabinet roles, Johnson is also the author of several best-selling books including personal memoirs, biographies and a series of crime thrillers. He is an accomplished published speaker and is shortly to embark on a small tour with his new show, The Beatles, Harold Wilson and Me, which promises music, humour and social history.
How did the new tour come about?
I published a music memoir in 2018 called In My Life. Every chapter was a piece of music I loved, from my earliest recollection to the time I decided I was never going to be a pop star. That led to a 50-day theatre tour where we played some of the music and talked about the period.
I recently published a biography of Harold Wilson, and it struck me and my interviewer Andrew Wilson as a good excuse to do a few more dates. It's called Harold Wilson, The Beatles, and Me. We talk about that and tell some jokes. There’s a bit of politics, but nothing heavy. The audience can ask questions, we play some music and have a pleasant evening.
You’re quoted as saying ‘if you lived through the 60s this could be an evening of nostalgia; if you didn't it could be an evening of discovery’. What might people learn from the show?
The decade began with the Cuban Missile Crisis and ended with the first moon landing. And in between, there was the Great Train Robbery, the assassination of JFK, Mods and Rockers, Twiggy… Culturally, internationally, politically, musically, it was an amazing decade. Equality for women, protection for people who would have been discriminated against on grounds of ethnicity, legalisation of homosexuality, ending backstreet abortions – all of that was an enormous leap forward.
What is incredible to me is looking back at how terrible things were for women. My mother was deserted by her feckless husband when I was eight, and we didn't know why she was so upset, given that he used to beat her up and all that. But even in the 1950s – past the midpoint in the 20th century! – a married woman couldn't hire a television without her husband signing the HP. Child Benefit went to the husband, and the divorce laws were antiquated. My mother couldn't get a divorce, even from this violent man. Wilson changed that in the 60s. [And then] there was the Open University and the expansion of university places, particularly for women, which meant it probably added to the sum of human happiness more than any other decade.
Whatever your political colours, the 60s was an absolutely fascinating decade.
To hear you talking about the progress made in the 60s your passion is evident. I wonder what you are most proud of from your time in Government.
I'm very proud that we introduced the National Minimum Wage. I'm proud that we introduced the right for adoptive parents to get time off. I'm really proud of Sure Start children's centres: the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently tracked the Sure Start kids and pointed out a difference in terms of their GCSE results between those kids that had that early intervention and the kids that didn't. So I’m proud of that. I'm proud of the peace – relative peace – in Northern Ireland. That was a really tough nut to crack. We got waiting times down to an average of eight weeks in the NHS; they started off as 18 months. There’s lots of advances there that I'm really proud of.
The show is not a heavy political take. We want people whatever their political persuasion to enjoy it. As it's me, I doubt if there'll be many from the Far Right or whatever, but you never know.
Do you think there’s a parallel to be made between the 60s and the 1990s?
I think if you're trying to pick out the most momentous decade, you would probably go for the 60s rather than 90s, just because a lot of what happened in the 90s depended on the 60s. I mean, Blur and Oasis wouldn't have been around without The Beatles – and they paid due tribute with very similar tunes.
Reflecting on what you’ve said, in your opinion do we really learn from history?
If you're talking about racial prejudice, for instance, a Black person couldn't rent a room or get a job in many places, and that's well documented. You can change the law, but the prejudice is still there. So, I think it's a fair point to say we don't learn the lessons. In fact, we could get dragged backwards, in my view.
With that in mind, where’s the line between taking lessons from history and (perhaps falsely) glorifying the past?
My childhood memoir is about growing up in London in the 50s, and this wasn't a period of peaceful innocence, a land of milk and honey. Many people look back on the 50s [but] there is a nostalgia to go back to an age that actually never existed. If you were a wife with a violent husband, if the colour of your skin was ‘wrong’, if you were of a certain religion, if you were disabled, if you were a child born out of wedlock, it was a pretty uncivilised kind of world. I remember it for violence and prejudice.
[However] you will get some people in politics who think that the 60s was the start of our decline: that the end of capital punishment and the liberalisation of our society, the legalisation of abortion, the legalisation of homosexuality, was somehow wrong. Those voices are getting more prominent now, which is why I fear that if we don't remember what things were like – as opposed to what some people who weren't even born at the time pretend they were like – we'll go backwards. This is particularly the case with anti-Semitism. When I was a kid, everyone remembered the war and what Hitler did. As time goes on you get prominent American commentators now saying that Hitler was right. And that is chilling.
It comes across that your life is driven by politics and by music. Can you enjoy the music of someone you disagree with politically?
It's a really good question. I can: I don't judge people on their politics. I judge them on their humanity and on their personality. I live near Hull, which was my constituency, and I'm the Vice President of the Larkin society. I wouldn't have got on with Philip Larkin politically at all. He was a Conservative, and a very big supporter of Margaret Thatcher.
Musically, I like the 1975; I'm not sure I'd get on with Matt Healy, but so what? The music is brilliant.
Sounds like you have broad taste when it comes to music. Which other current acts do you like?
CMAT – I think she's absolutely amazing. I’ve got Lily Allen's West End Girl; I'm not really a fan of Lily Allen, but that is an amazing album. Also, Florence and the Machine, Arctic Monkeys. And I love the 1975. I love everything they do.
I'm not one of these people who just stuck with my old Best of Dire Straits albums, or even the Best of The Beatles. The Beatles changed my life and changed the world, so part of the evening is explaining what it was like to be a 13-year-old when The Beatles hit. From pretty simple songs like Love Me Do to just four years later, stuff like Eleanor Rigby and Strawberry Fields Forever. These were complex musical songs which were all part of the evolution that dragged others along behind them, like Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys and The Kinks.
As well as broad taste in music, you are a rare example of a political figure with a broad appeal that crosses the party-political divide. Why do you think that is?
I know what you mean… I'm probably the least able person to put their finger on it, but I suppose it’s a capacity for speaking English rather than ‘political speak’. I don't know any other way to speak. There are politicians [who have] a kind of mentality that suggests you [should] speak a different language if you're talking about politics, to me, it's very simple: just be yourself. ‘To thine own self be true,’ as Shakespeare said.
Alan Johnson will be making two appearances at the Oxford Literary Festival. On 27 March, in addition to talking about his latest book, Harold Wilson: Twentieth-Century Man at 2pm, he will be interviewing Sajid Javid at 6pm in the Sheldonian, oxfordliteraryfestival.org.
In April, The Beatles, Harold Wilson and Me – An Evening with Alan Johnson will be performed at The Kenton Theatre in Henley-on-Thames and the Cidermill Theatre in Chipping Camden, and in May will be at the Players Theatre in Thame.
For more information on upcoming events, plus links to book tickets, visit alanjohnsonbooks.co.uk.
