Unparliamentary Language: Paddy Ashdown
9 min read
Agnes Chambre sits down with parliamentarians to find out more about the human side of politics. This week, former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown on being a tank, his love of literature and crying easily.
What were you like at school?
Disastrous.
In what way?
When I went to school in Northern Ireland, I had a very broad Northern Ireland accent, that’s why they call me Paddy. Paddy’s not my real name, although I sort of feel more comfortable with it than I do with Jeremy. I went to boarding school at 11 with a broad accent so I was teased and had to fight my way through, literally on many occasions.
When did you lose your Irish accent?
The problem is, in the end you conform. I certainly had it at 11, but I’d lost it by 12. I’m very sad of that because I’m proud of my Irish roots and the fact that I don’t have a regional accent is really quite disturbing.
What do you think of Northern Ireland?
As a 14-year-old, I knew that [The Troubles] were coming. Wandering the streets of Belfast I watched the complete denial of human rights. I had nightmares about it long before and then I found myself back on the streets of Northern Ireland as a soldier trying to keep the peace in my own city. I think there is a certain madness that grips people and once that flimsy veil that separates us from brutes and beasts is torn down, people seem able to do anything to anybody. I find it bewildering, it was exactly the same as Sarajevo when I went.
What were you interested in at school?
Rugby, girls and athletics. My dad used to despair about me, absolutely despair about my school reports. Hopeless at mathematics, uninterested in almost anything else, until two things happened. My parents ran out of money and I had to take a naval scholarship to pay for my last two years at school in 1956. I then had to be more serious because now I was saving my beloved parents from financial difficulty. The second was one day a friend asked me to go with him to the poetry society. ‘The poetry society? Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. But nevertheless I thought I would go and see what the weirdos got up to. It was a day which changed my life. I met an English teacher who just lit a fire in me that has never gone out, for literature, for poetry, for classical music.
What’s your earliest memory?
My family had been in India since 1805 but in 1946 the British were kicked out. It must have been the early part of the partition riots. My mum and I went home early, she was taking me down through Quetta on the North West frontier to catch the boat back from Bombay to Britain. The train stopped outside a station and I can remember very well the sense of fear, although I couldn’t work out why. My mum stuffed my face in her skirt as the train pulled through the station but being a five-year-old, I looked out.
What I now describe may well have been exaggerated by nightmares since, but the platform was covered with the remnants of a massacre, with bodies disembodied and disembowelled. But in a way it’s this strange subterranean stream that has run through my life from the very earliest moments. That was the earliest memory but a strange one, possibly exaggerated, probably it wasn’t as bad as I see it in my head now.
When we came back and I was the son of a protestant mother and a catholic father, brought up in Northern Ireland, and then throughout of my life, this business of this horrible thing that happens when human beings lose their heads and decide it’s a good idea to kill each other for a god who’s supposed to be in all religions about love. That theme seems to have continued right the way through my existence, through to Bosnia.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
My mum put me on a ship when I was five and it was the only time I’d ever seen the sea and I was just completely captivated, so then all I wanted to be was in the Royal Navy. I never really changed that. In truth, I could have gone to university and I got a place at Oxford, much to my teacher’s surprise. But my parents couldn’t afford to send me. If I had gone to university, I would have wasted it on booze and girls. I went to the Royal Marines and it really taught me things I needed to do. It took an over-energetic, over-testosterone fuelled man and gave him some self-discipline.
What’s an interesting fact your colleagues don’t know about you?
I cry rather easily. I can’t go to refugee camps. That’s why I was so miserable in the Balkans because I used to have to go to them, and I could never stop myself crying. I would see my own mother and my children and my daughter and my wife there.
When was the last time you cried?
Oh, I can’t remember and I wouldn’t tell you anyway. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s usually in the sight of human wretchedness and misery or seeing a kind of beauty which reminds you of the immortal. It wasn’t that long ago that I was travelling on the Eurostar across to Paris and I was going across those battlefields of the Somme and I was listening to Strauss’s last songs and that did it for me, to the considerable constellation of people sitting round me on the Eurostar. Me snuffling away in the corner.
What habit really annoys you in other people?
Not agreeing with me. I find it very annoying indeed. But I have learnt in my life that almost always the most valuable people are the people who disagree with me. There was a bloke called Julian Astle who worked for me when I was leader of the party. I used to describe him as like the Chinese man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. I don’t mean to be scary, I can be a bit of a tank and I need the person who has the courage to stand in front of me. Although I’d often say to him after a couple of hours of wrestling, ‘fuck off, Julian, I’m going to do it’. But I knew that answering his questions made the plan far better than it would have been if it had just been by me. The worst thing for a leader is hubris and creating around them an echo chamber of their own views.
What mistakes did you make when you were younger?
I’m far too wise not to know I didn’t make lots, but I’m far too experienced to tell you what they were. Thousands and thousands is the answer.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
I don’t think anybody has given me advice. I’ll tell you what advice I give to others. Never ever ever stop learning. I get lots of people coming to me and saying ‘I want to be a politician’ and they’re in their early 20s. I say, ‘do us a favour, don’t. Go away and have adventures, do something dangerous and then come back and you’ll be a far better politician’.
Do you have any recurring dreams or nightmares?
One recurring dream I always have is that I have to get somewhere and I can’t get everything packed in time. I suppose that particular dream is telling me to never waste a moment. Holidays I can lie on the beach for about three hours and then I have to do something. I get upset if I feel that I have wasted time.
What is something that has changed your life?
Meeting that poetry teacher changed my life. I think my education up to that point had been like piling up pieces of tinder, they all looked like dried pieces of wood that had no consequence whatsoever, they weren’t going to take me anywhere, but then someone came along and lit them and that was what changed my life.
Have you ever been fired from a job?
No but I was turned down for a job. By a Liberal as well. What nobody knows about Paddy Ashdown is, as well as an ex-marine, I’m ex-unemployed. I was out of work for a year before I was elected. I could have come to London but I was determined to stay in Yeovil to fight the seat. Jane and I were down to our last £100 and it was a very miserable time. I was applying for every job I could. I tried to be a heavy goods vehicle driver and the guy took me out and said ‘look, Paddy, do me a favour don’t do this, you’re an absolute disaster, you’ll kill people.’
Were you not very good?
I was hopeless. I am not a good driver. Jane does the driving. I find it boring and keep on thinking of other things. I find it very boring, so I applied to be a regional manager for Age Concern and I applied to a man who I still meet at party conferences and he turned me down for the job.
Why?
You better ask him. He probably thought I wasn’t the kind of person to manage a charity of that sort. By the way I think he was wrong. I often reminded him when I was leader of the party.
When was the last time you made someone laugh?
I don’t know but it’s a priceless gift. Jane, my wife, always says the reason she’s stuck with me is because I make her laugh. I rather like being outrageous. When you get old, you should be outrageous and I like being outrageous. I have a habit with my friends of insulting them cheerfully, pulling their legs. If I really like you, I’ll say extremely rude things to you with a twinkle in my eye which you’re meant to laugh at and people mostly do.
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