Why did you call it ‘A Fortunate Life’?
If you read the beginning of it, I don’t know whether the taster includes the first chapter, but what I say is that my life was not planned on the back of a fag packet like Michael Heseltine’s at Oxford at the age of 18. My life has been a happening. I was a soldier at the end of the golden age of soldiering, I was a diplomat at a time when diplomacy mattered, I was a politician when it was still a calling, not a profession, but all of these things happened to me by accident, but all the accidents turned out to be good ones, so I count myself to be an extremely fortunate person.
How have you found the experience of writing an autobiography? Remembering all the circumstances and events of your life?
Well its my sixth book and of course I’ve already done two sets of diaries, but I love writing, I love the process of writing and it almost seemed to write itself, so I enjoyed it.
Did you keep a diary throughout your life?
No kept a diary since 1988 and stopped keeping it when I came back from Bosnia, except for important events. I kept a diary for 25 years but I don’t keep one still.
A lot of the early bits are from memory then?
A lot of the early bits are from memory and my friends memories and records, for instance that were kept from my time with the Royal Marines and the Special Boats Service. So it’s my memories, my wife’s memories, my friends’ memories and records.
So, looking back on it, what episodes of your varied career (the caption of the book is: ‘One Man, Many Lives’) give you the most pride?
I don’t believe in pride very much. I think it’s a rather unhelpful emotion. If you said ‘what was the greatest night of my life?’ Then it was undoubtedly being elected to parliament for Yeovil, the community that is my community, it took me eight years to win my seat. It was said to be impossible. Some times people say to me ‘oh you politicians just go into it for what you can get out of it’, I like to remind them that in 1976, when I took up the Liberal cause in Yeovil, the Tories had held the seat for 70 years, we regularly came third, Liberal candidates were famous for losing their deposits and coming behind the British National Party and my party leader had just been arraigned for attempted murder in the Old Bailey. It was hardly a tempting proposition, so I think that night above all when I became MP for Yeovil. There’s no greater privilege in the world than representing the community you live in and love in Parliament. The second greatest privilege is to stand before your country as one of three people at election time proposing the way that you think the country should go and I’ve done that too. And then I was asked to help to build peace in the little country of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which I love very much. So you see why I call myself a fortunate man.
Those are not moments of pride, but maybe highlights.
Yeah, Highlights if you like.
On the flipside of that, is there an element of your life where you’ve felt this is a bad moment?
[Laughs]… I’m far too experienced to know that I didn’t make many, many, many mistakes, but I’m far too wise to tell you what they were. I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life and lots of ones that made me embarrassed.
Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?
Well… being Prime Minister of Britain. I wouldn’t have minded doing that.
Is it still possible?
No… Everybody’s life has things they’d liked to have done but haven’t, but look I can’t complain, I’ve had a fascinating life, I’ve been a soldier, a diplomat, a youth worker, unemployed, a businessman, a politician and a peacemaker, you can’t want for more than that.
The main thing though is that you don’t feel you might have achieved everything you wanted to in Westminster politics.
No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t say that. I think I achieved everything I set out to do, but would I have liked to have been Prime Minister of Britain, yes of course I would. So I’m very content with my life.
You’d never consider returning to UK frontline politics?
No.
About Bosnia. You were there from 2002-2006. How do you feel about the country today?
Well I was very privileged to do what I was doing in Bosnia to move the country towards peace. I have to say that I think the country is now moving backwards. I think the situation in Bosnia is really potentially difficult and potentially even dangerous. I don’t think it will return to war, but I regret the fact that much of the progress that was made in those early years has now been undone and I blame, in large measure, the international community for that.
Do you think it’s become a forgotten issue?
I don’t complain about that, of course it is. The war was 15 years ago. The world has other priorities. Although, we do need to realise that in these exercises about trying to make peace, we usually lose interest too early and the result is that it goes backwards, like it has done in Bosnia. My worry is that Europe hasn’t got its act together, the international community’s not paying attention and I think we’re sleepwalking back into some crisis or another in Bosnia.
At the moment, you’re a lord, but what else are you up to?
Too much! My wife tells me that this part of our lives is me pretending to be retired and she pretending to believe me.
That’s the name of the last chapter isn’t it?
Yes it is. I’ve got a lot of things to do. I was yesterday in Paris, talking about Bosnia. I’ve got to go to New York shortly for a talk at Yale. I do a lot of lecturing in the Defence Colleges, I write a lot of articles, I’m thinking about doing another book, probably a novel or a thriller, and I’m busy trying to help my party, the Liberal Democrats and my new leader Nick Clegg who I admire very much, whenever I can. I’m not short of things to do.
How do you feel the Lib Dems are doing at the moment?
I think in the present circumstances, they’re doing well. It’s very difficult for them to get in in the middle of an economic crisis. I think support for the Tories looks as if it’s wide, but not very deep. People are not enthusiastic about Mr Cameron and I think the Tories are now perpetrating a great con trick that they’ve changed. I don’t think they have. Mr Cameron may want them to change, but I don’t think they have changed. I think Labour is in real difficulties. So the Lib Dem time will come and it will come soon. The party’s in a good position I think.
Do you envisage, after the next election, a hung parliament with the Lib Dems having a bit more power?
I never predict the outcome of elections.
Do you think the UK will ever have a PR system?
It has got a PR system. That was one of the things we managed to achieve when I was leader of the party. We have PR for the European and the elections in Scotland and Wales. Sooner or later, it’s got to happen because political arrogance on the part of the politicians and their determination to not listen to the people is breaking our politics apart. The big thing about proportional representation is it puts power back with the voter and takes it away from the politicians and I think that’s necessary.
Do you feel that looking back on the early times, back in Borneo and all the fascinating experiences, do you feel that that was a very formative period?
Yes I do, but I think that everything is a formative period. I’m a very lucky person and if there’s a criticism that I have about our politics, its that far too many politicians go into it in a short time, so they’ve never done anything else. So yes. The experience I had in the Royal Marines and my time in the Special Boat Services was definitely important to me and very formative and so was the experience of learning Chinese and so was the experience of being a youth worker.
All these sorts of things have given you a change to develop as an alternative to the career politicians?
That’s right.
If someone were to turn this book into a film, whom would you like to play you?
[Laughs]… Me! [Laughs]…
You’d like to play yourself?
[Laughs]… I haven’t a clue.
Civil liberties are an issue that’s important for the Lib Dems. Do you feel that there’s a way back from the gradual erosion of civil liberties under the present Labour government?
Yeah, there has to be. It’s the big thing that differentiated me from Blair. I think if we’d put together the partnership government that we were talking about, some of the appalling and scandalous attacks on our civil liberties, we used to be famous in the world for our freedom, now we’re famous in the world because we’re under the government’s control. The database that’s been constructed by the government without anything like enough fuss, will be able to tell the government where every individual in Britain is all the time and I think that’s a scandal. I think that new technologies should be used to give people information, not the government control and the reason why Gordon Brown asked me to be a member of his cabinet, just before he was Prime Minister and I said know because I knew he was going to mount another attack on our civil liberties and I certainly could not accept that. He said to me would I be quiet about it and I said ‘no. I can’t be quiet about it, this is a scandalous attack on our civil liberties and unfortunately not enough people are making a fuss about it.
So was that the reason you didn’t accept the position?
Yeah, in the book I tell the whole story of what happened. He asked to see me and the reason I said no was because I knew he was going to move towards a very substantial extension on the rights of liberty to be held by the police without being charged.
Why do you think they’re doing it?
Because they mistakenly believe that it will help in the war against terrorism, but it wont, as the head of MI5 has recently said. The real worry is that they’re doing it because they think it will help protect people, but it doesn’t by the way, the real worry is that you should never create systems in a democracy that rely on the goodwill of the politicians that happen to be in power. I’m not saying that Gordon Brown or the Labour government will misuse this, but a future government might. Using the very instruments that they have created. Its very dangerous and a complete misunderstanding on their part. I don’t accuse them of bad faith, but I do accuse them of either naivety on the one hand or democratic stupidity on the other! It shows a lack of knowledge of history apart from anything else.
Do you worry about the political future or are you optimistic?
I think we have a serious problem ahead of us. I’m confident about the skills and abilities of the average British citizen. I think there is a real democratic crisis occurring. Politicians are held by the people in very low regard, and rightly so. Politicians don’t seem to be listening to what people are saying. We’re as close to a democratic crisis now in the capacity of government to be able to govern effectively and with the people’s consent, so I think there’s a very serious issue occurring. By the way not just in Britain, but in every western democratic state. Its something I think we should be concerned about.
1 comment:
Amazing, nice work ralph! It seems like Lord Ashdown is a really sound guy- it's interesting to see his prediction of a democratic crisis a matter of weeks before the MPs Expenses melt down. I'd been keen to know what he thinks about the situation now... follow up interview maybe?...
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