Ann Widdecombe: Politics, Perserverance And The Pasodoble

Ann Widdecombe made some very interesting points on today's show

Okay, well, for those of you who haven't, tuned in before and are just tuning in for Ann Widdecombe. I will say before we start, it was very good to get Anne on very. Some very interesting, points that she made. However, I am. I would say that I'm not politically aligned with Anne, but do you think I'm going to go toe to toe with a political heavyweight? No, I am not. But, yesah, some interesting things you've got to say. I think it'interesting the baseline of, her what is normal.

In Scotland, the sun is shining and the daffodils are appearing

>> Lee Crompton: Without further ado, here's AnnWiddecombe.

>> Lee Crompton: Can you hear the bees?

>> Lee Crompton: I can.

>> Lee Crompton: Today, we are delighted to be joined by Anne Widdecombe. Anne, how are you?

>> Speaker D: I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

>> Lee Crompton: I am very well. Like we just said, the sun is shining. I don't know what it's like with you, but in Scotland, the sun is.

>> Speaker D: Out and the sky I'dartmoor and my camelia is out.

>> Lee Crompton: There you go.

>> Speaker D: Drops are there, and the stalks of the daffodils are appearing.

>> Lee Crompton: Brilliant. It's new life. Ye start of a new season. All good.

>> Speaker D: All good.

You grew up in Somerset with admiralty family

>> Lee Crompton: I was going to start with your early life because I'm originally from down in Dorset.

>> Speaker D: Right.

>> Lee Crompton: And I understand that you grew up in Somerset.

>> Speaker D: I didn't do too much growing up in Somerset. I was born in Somerset.

>> Lee Crompton: I was far. Okay.

>> Speaker D: But I was with, an admiralty family. And, therefore we moved around every two to three years with the navy. And so, yes, I was born in Bu. but when I was three, we went to, Gosport, which is near Portsmouth.

>> Lee Crompton: Oh, yes. Was it Fleetland's naval base? I've done some work in Fleetland's naval base in Gosport.

>> Speaker D: I don't remember it being called Fleetlands. It may have been, but it was the naval base in Goport.

>> Lee Crompton: Okay. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know it well. I know it well.

>> Speaker D: and we used to live up pretty hard. You may even know that.

>> Lee Crompton: Yes. Yeah.

>> Speaker D: And then, when I was five and a half, we went to Singapore, and then we came back from Singapore, when I was nearly nine. And we lived thereafter in Surrey and Sussex. And then we returned to Bath very briefly for two years. And I was then left at boarding school in Bath after that because the moves were destabilising and most forces children, once they started their secondary education, they boarded because it was the only way, of stabilising it.

You became interested in politics from mid teens during Cold War

>> Lee Crompton: Okay, so what, you moved around a lot, obviously.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Lee Crompton: What would you say sparked your interest in what. What stage would do you get an interest in politics. What, what manifested that, do you think?

>> Speaker D: I was interested in politics from mid teens. It was the age of the Cold War and the world was very sharply divided into two great conflicting political ideologies. It was capitalism from the western communism, from Russia and the Eastern bloc. and most of us were engaged on one side or the other because in western countries that battle was fought out largely in some it was, but largely between, not between communism and capitalism, but between socialism and capitalism. But it was real socialism. It was redared in Intoth and Thor. And you had a choice and nobody said to you then on a doorstep what they say all the time now, which is, well, what's the difference? They're all the same. We knew the difference and therefore we were committed on one side or the other with head, with ah, heart, with the very gut. It's difficult to describe just what a different world it was. And so I became interested in politics.

>> Lee Crompton: I was just thinking how that parallel draws now with people who are in their mid teens now with the world that we now live in. How many years on.

>> Speaker D: We live in a very different world. We live in an uncertain world at the moment. I, I'm not quite certain what America and NATO are going to do for example, but we live in an uncertain world but it isn't quite the polarised world that it was then. You know, people knew in this country that it made a real difference who won the general election. You know, the country would be run on different climbs. now there's an awful lot of blurring and I think young people aren't faced with the, the stark choices that we were faced with.

Who would you say your influences were in life or in politics or in literature

>> Lee Crompton: Who would you say your influences were either in life or in politics or in literature growing up?

>> Speaker D: Well, Churchill was obviously a big one. you know, I was born in 47 and that immediate post war generation was brought up to venerate Churchill effectively and again difficult to understand now. But the war was all around us in the sense that you had families who droped people in the war. You know, it wasn't at all unusual to see people who were quite previously disabled or was thickered or whatever it was. indeed I served as an M. MP who was very badly disigureded from a burning tank. so the war was all around us. And so Churchill was a big influence in that sense. And his influence was largely the same that I've admired some other politicians for. Like Wilberforce was resolution. You know, he knew appeasement was wrong at a time when nobody wanted another blessed war. You know, it's 20 years since the last one. Nobody wanted it, but he understood that it had to be done. And he never ever wavered. And the same with wilder force. Wilder force knew that slavery was wrong. and he never wavered in what was a very long fight. It's easy to imagine you, it was few years closer to 40 years before we abolished slavery. so resolution I think is emotionally important. Mrs. Sacher had it for example, and that's what I've always admired.

Anne Milton comes from a robust generation in which we expect stress

>> Lee Crompton: I don't know if you're aware that we had Alistair Campbell on the podcast.

>> Speaker D: Yes.

>> Lee Crompton: He was interestingly saying that he thought that the House of Commons was like a lab or a petri dish coming on to mental health, but a lab or a petri dish for bad mental health. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that.

>> Speaker D: No, I mean, I come from a pretty robust generation in as much as we expect stress. I look at my parents and they talk perfectly, or they talk perfectly, normally, about how my grandmother came out of an air raid shelter. She had no home left, know that was it. She came to live with us after that because she was a widow and my father was on the high seas. My mother never knew whether his ship was going to be torpedoed. And I had an aunt who lost both sons in the war. and it was a generation which largely believed in getting on with it. Now that's not always so easy, but when there is a generational atmosphere around you which says this is what you do, then it's what you do. And when I went into politics, everybody into the House of Commons, every last person, said to me, oh, it must be dreadful being a woman in the House of Commons. I said no it isn't. And I said, but it's such a men's club. And I said it's a very jolly men's club. I like it. And I went in never expecting to be treated any differently just because I was a woman, if I was, it didn't dwell on it. She got on with and therefore I didn't run into the problems that some other women did. And I vividly remember one of the Labour, ladies who got in at the same time as I did, coming, up to me in a corridor in the House of Commons and saying to me, o Anne, isn't it terrible how they're so rude to us? And I said yes, and isn't it terrible how they're so rude to each other. And she hadn't thought of that. She'd just been mashed up in the chamber. She thought it was because she was a woman, in fact was because she was useless.

People have started to confuse ordinary stresses of life with mental health issues

>> Lee Crompton: Okay. I mean, it's an interesting thing, isn't that, that, you know, mental health. Obviously we're doing this podcast and we also spoke to Jonathan Agnew and it was interesting talking to him in terms of he was saying things along the lines of when he was away on tour and he's away for like three months at a time.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Lee Crompton: And I suppose that definition of mental health, he said, well, I just thought I was lonely. But now you might just say, well, you know, I've got mental health issues because I was dropped by the England team. Or I've got mental health issues because.

>> Speaker D: Those aren't mental health issues. I mean, I don't have much time for Tony Blair, but I do think he was right when he said recently that people have started to confuse the ordinary stresses of life with mental health. And mental health is a big serious thing. You've got mental health problems, you know, real serious mental health problems. You don't want to hear that somebody stressed out because they've been dropped by the England side or whatever, you know, because, that is not a good reason to be stressed out. If you've got a terminal diagnosis m you've got a reason to be stressed out. So I mean, I think we do have to distinguish between everyday stress and learning to cope with that is just a part of being human. It's just a part of being on this planet. And serious stress, which is very, very different. And as I say, some generations take what we would consider to be unbelievable stress in their stride because it's the time that they were living in. Yeah.

>> Lee Crompton: And I think that is interesting. Like you say that you. I wasosed to the word benchmark. Your benchmark is growing up in the post war Britain with like you say, people who were disabled, disfigured, lost loved ones, was invertt commas the norm.

>> Speaker D: Yes.

>> Lee Crompton: Compared with, you know, the world we live in today and the privileges and opportunities that we've got now. It is a completely different landscape. And I think, I suppose the interesting thing for me is that I've said before that I always think I've struggled with my mental health and kind of muddled through. And it was only having the cancer diagnosis. That's then almost validated me talking about that because, people have gone, well, of course you've got mental health issues. You Were told you had six months to live.

>> Speaker D: Congratulations on still being.

>> Lee Crompton: Thank you very much. Yes. I've got my four and a half year onology appointment next month and they can't quite tell me why I'm still here but I'm still knocking about and so Yeah, and I suppose. Sorry, I know I'm meandering off the conversations here but going back to what you were saying. Excuse me.

Did you ever struggle with the stress of politics or how did you manage it

In the landscape that you grew up, one of my questions was going to be. Well one of the questions was going to be politics as a high pressure environment full of scrutiny. Did you ever struggle with the stress and how did you manage it? But that's kind of like you say, but your benchmark is post war Britain.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. I think the short and simple answer to your question is now I didn't struggle with stress and problem. Now you know, there were times when the scrutiny was intense. There were times when people gave me a reputation that was unfair. but that is all part of political life and I think in those days also our politicians were generally speaking of a higher standard. I think we've got a very low standard of MP at the moment. I'm not surprised that they collapse easily. and it is important that we get some quality back into parliament. Get some very serious heavy hitter back into parliament because after all they're running the nation. We forget that it's not just a cirplus, they're running the nation.

You've done reality TV shows, including Celebrity Big Brother

>> Lee Crompton: I guess that brings me on to the next question which of course I'm jumping about questions here but again you've done reality TV shows.

>> Speaker D: Oh yes.

>> Lee Crompton: Which you're watched by millions now. Surely again as someone, your public Persona if you like. And watching you, I didn't see one celebrity big. Was it celebrity Bigig Brother you on.

>> Speaker D: Yes, I did.

>> Lee Crompton: I didn't see you on that but I'm an avid, strictly watcher. and, and again you never seem to be. I mean you're being watched by millions live on Saturday night primeime television. That's got to bring some. You never seem to be phased by. But surely that's got to bring some pressures and stress, hasn't it?

>> Speaker D: No. I used to tease, I used to positively tease, some of my colleagues, on that. My fellow contestants, perhaps I should say on that show because they used to get very head up about it. It's a der. It's not a war. Nobody's going to die. People might be injured, possible, but nobody's gonna die. You know, it's not a war. It's a dance show. And I used to say this all the time to Patsy, Ken it, Patsy, it's a dance show. And she actually grew quite amused by that, used to repeat it. so, again, I was never stressed by that. One of the big advantages of having the sort of childhood I had where you wee round all the time is that one day you would be living in a house that you'd been in for two, three years, you'd be having friends that you'd have that long, you'd be going to a particular school, you'd belong to a local Browy fact. Very next day, no cosy transition, no preparation. Very next day you would be on your way to a different part of the country or a different part of the globe. And, you would be preparing to get used to a new house for Granny Pac and to make friends again from scratch. And the subconscious lesson of that childhood, I didn't realise it at the time, but its subconscious lesson was when something's gone, it's gone, gone. You know, the friends, the house, everything that was familiar yesterday, they've gone. And so when I retired as an MP in 2010, I knew that that had gone. Now everybody said to me that if I did strictly few likes said it. They said I'd lose my gravitas. Actually, it was gravity I had most the problems with on Swifter. And I said, yes, that's quite true, I will lose my gravitas, but, what do I want it for? And they hadn't thought of that. They just assumed that everything carried on in the same way. I knew that I was making a complete break with something that had dominated my life and that I was moving on to something new. And I threw myself into space. It was enormous fun. I knew we could never get anywhere near the bit. So the idea was to have fun, to entertain, to have people saying, what earth is you going to do this time? and, apart from the fact that I insisted on matching leggings with every dress I wore and function, I just threw myself into it.

>> Lee Crompton: Absolutely. And that. And that came across. And, yeah, I mean, is it something that you en. Have you always enjoyed dancing or was it a challenge or what?

>> Speaker D: What? I was never dancing. Anton called it many things, but he never called it dancing. I was never dancing.

>> Lee Crompton: But you enjoyed it?

>> Speaker D: Oh, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. when I went on the programme, I seriously thought, as I did with Big Brother actually, I seriously thought I'd be early out.

>> Speaker D: I know it's very nice because you get paid, but you go. I don't effectively or being paid for doing not much, just re appearing from D time. So I thought that'll be all right. You know, two to three weeks. Ten weeks.

>> Lee Crompton: Ten weeks.

>> Speaker D: Ah, before we went out. and it was just enormous fun. I would never have predicted it and I'm pretty certain nobody else would either.

>> Lee Crompton: I've seen. It's interesting. I don't know whether you've. Do you watch the Traitors?

>> Speaker D: No, I'd loved. I haven't seen a whole traitors through but from what I have seen, I'd love to do a celebr version of that.

>> Lee Crompton: I think they are doing a celebrity version of that.

>> Speaker D: They are, but I haven't been fortunate enough to be invited.

>> Lee Crompton: You haven't been invited But I saw that on the American one they've got. I think they kind of do it half and half, which is a bit of a weird setup. So you've got half, I say normal people, you've got half members of the general public and then half are in a ve commas famous one of which I think John Burkcote was on one.

>> Speaker D: I don't know.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah. Which.

>> Speaker D: With three halves.

>> Lee Crompton: Which is a bit of a weird pick I would have thought John Birkco on the American Traitors.

>> Speaker D: Who knows? I mean they took a risk by asking me on strictly. I mean they, you know, they try things and sometimes it works wonderfully and sometimes, of course it doesn't but you know, that's what happens with inspiration. Sometimes it really comes out and sometimes it doesn't. And it's like generals fighting a war. You know, they do something and if it fails, everybody says, oh, they were rash, they were stupid. If it works, they say, oh, what a mastertrokee genius. It's done exactly the same thing.

I think politicians are much more aware, uh, of mental health

>> Lee Crompton: Getting back to mental health.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Lee Crompton: Do you sense there's been a shift in mental. How mental health is talked about in politics?

>> Speaker D: Yes, I think there has been a very large shift. I think politicians are much more aware, of mental health. I think maybe, as I've already indicated, you know, maybe it's been taken a bit too far, and people identify ordinary stress as a mental health issue. But I can think of a time when mental health was hardly ever talked to her. It just wasn't recognised. So I think it's important that we do recognise big mental health issues but I think it's also important that we distinguish between that and the trivial. And I remember one of the Things that irritated me most was when Prince William he'a very sensible. But when his father tested pos for Covid and he had to isolate for three or four days, Prince William said in all seriousness, this was with this disease of ravaging through the nation. Prince William said in all seriousness o It was badge for his mental health. Now that is just a trivialization of something that was massive and I think that is sometimes big danger. We can confuse being a bit miserable and being depressed with actual mental health issues.

>> Lee Crompton: I think there is a difference between. Well, there is a difference between feeling sad or stressed and having mental health issues. It's not a finite line. I don't think. You know, there's a very, there's a very muddy kind of crossover I think in terms of. No.

>> Speaker D: And nobody goes through life on an even keel all the time.

>> Speaker D: I mean if anybody does, they're exceptionally blessed. I mean it's not normal. most of us have periods when we're unhappy, when we're a bit sad, whatever it might be, when we pe a mystic. But those things are not mental health issues. Those things are just part of being a human being.

>> Lee Crompton: Just life.

>> Speaker D: Ye.

Anne Widdecombe says when you're stressed, animals calm the jets

>> Lee Crompton: As someone who, as we ever mentioned, appears to be extremely resilient in the modern world, Anne, do you think, and I think the answer is that is it partly your upbringing? But when you do feel stressed, is there anything that Anne Widdecombe does that calms the. Calms the jets?

>> Speaker D: Why smooth the cat, okay? There's nothing like a furring catle on your lap. Just actually get your sense of proportion back. Because he doesn't know anything about it. He doesn't care. No, what he cares about is there, fish in his bowl. And you know, and sometimes I think animals can restore a sense of proportion. And you realise, you know, that whatever it is that you're worried about, it is going to pass. You know that famous phrase, this twoall pass. Yeah. And I mean I have another one which is the best is yet to come. because when I remember when I was going, I went through m a massive financial crisis in the early 90s. and I saw a big sign in an evangelical church saying the best is yet to come. And I thought, oh no it ain't. But it was. And m so ever since then I've always said to myself, the best is yet to come. And another motto that I've had from my teens is care Dm sees the day. Because as you will know, you know, if we've only got a limited period on this earth. Seize the day, make m the most of the day.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it was interesting that, I'SAY interesting. It was interesting to me that, my say when I was diagnosed, my youngest was eight months old. Ye and she had a fifth birthday the other day and we said what? I said to her, what, what? On the last day of, the day before her fifth birthday, I said, what are you going to do special today? I said, because this day will never come again. You will never before ever again. So what are you going to do to make that special? And the reality was that we had jelly and ice cream for breakfast. But you can transcribe that into, I guess for me, I am never going to be 51 ever again or we're never going to have the, 25th of February ever again. So how are you going to make that? How are you going to make that? You know, not unique. You can't live every day like, right, I'm going to smash it out the park. You know, life takes over. But no, I think there is very much an element, especially having face draw mortality that you say, right, well, what are you going to do? That's because you realise that time is. Time is a precious commodity and you.

>> Speaker D: Only get one gu. And that's what I always say, because know one. And, you'll succeed, you fail, you know, you won't have a long run of unlimited failure or a long run of unlimited success. And the same thing goes for health and the same thing goes for happiness. You know, you have periods of those things, but you only have that one go. You know, you don't get a second one. No, when you get to my age you really realise that, you know, I mean, I'm now 77 and, the other day I was on a train and I was looking out of the window and we were passing from the countryside. That reminded me very, very sharply of the countryside in which I grew up in one of the houses that we lived in, and the way this evening sun was falling across it reallyly evocative and thought. And then I was a child and I had a family that I thought would always be there because in childhood, you know, that short perspective and it's gone and it's never coming back. And I had that go and I made of it what I could by getting into Parliament and all the rest of it. And I just think it's important that at this age you can be very calm about the fact that all that's Gone. and, you can enjoy it.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah, I think that's like you say that goes back to what you were saying earlier about the almost compartmentalising that's gone and moving on to whatever the next. Whatever the next thing is.

>> Speaker D: But, I would never have predicted ever when I retired from Parliament in 2010 and then I went off into showbids. Not by design, by accident, because of what happened on Strictly. I went off and I did pantomimes M and I was on it for Ro Up House and all this sort of stuff. And I would never have predicted that I would be going back into politics, let alone to go to the European Parliament, which I'd always thought was a, Mickey Mouse set up. And if you told me I was going to stand, you would be never ever have expected. I m. Am now back in politics because I'm working hard for reform. And so it was not predicted, but it happened. And I think that's the other thing. You can look back on your life and you can look at the twists and the turn and you can think that's not something I would ever have predicted. You can't, cont. Predict the future.

>> Lee Crompton: What, what do you, what do you.

>> Lee Crompton: See for, I suppose, British politics in. In the near future and especially with what's happening in America, world politics, I guess, because it's, it's. Is volatile the right word?

>> Speaker D: It'volatile is right. I mean, I said predictable. I thought the young were growing up now in a very uncertain world. And I think that is, that is absolutely true. I think the Trump Putin thing is very, very dangerous. But the world has a habit of surviving. I mean, it's difficult to remember now, but those of us who grew up in the Cold War were really unsr as to whether there would be a nuclear war. I remember the Cuba crisis. Ye, lying in bed in the dormitory at school in the night of the Coa crisis, you know, wondering what on earth we were going to wake up to. But it passed. Because man does have an instinct for survival. We have a big, big instinct. ###vival and so I think we'll come through this as well. But. But it is a very uncertain.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah, especially with Musk seemingly, sticking his beak in. I don't quite know.

>> Lee Crompton: This is.

>> Lee Crompton: We've come to this.

>> Speaker D: Be honest. I mean, I don't know how we've come to. I mean the choice that they had in the United States, the fact that they had. And no one has because they'd had a president who was completely singer and who right up to the last minute almost're still talking about state?ing again. And I think one of the problems in the States is in this country you can become prime minister for nothing at all. In the States you need money to run for president.

Tal says he came back into politics because of the EU referendum

You know, you need to be at a certain level and I'm pretty certain that is limiting the pool of Tal.

>> Lee Crompton: Just surely if, like you say, if they're the two best that they've got.

>> Speaker D: Yeah, then what a choice.

>> Lee Crompton: What a choice. What else was I going to ask?

>> Speaker D: I don't know.

>> Lee Crompton: That makes sense. I was going to say that obviously you've had a varied career from politics to writing to television and back to politics. And you said you're now into your 70s. Yeah, well, in well into your 70s. What keeps you, what keeps you motivated?

>> Speaker D: I think my convictions as to what I believe in, I came back into politics because of Brexit, because during the referendum itself I was active, but I didn't see that as the start of anything. It was just an activive in the referendum and I expected, naively the result of the referendum to be implemented. I thought, right, that's it. and because we then went for about three years in which absolutely no Brexit happened and a lot of messing about and frustration and she incetence. and I thought, well, you know, I believe in Brexit, I believe these people are messing around. What am I going to do about it? Am I going to be an armchair politician or am I just going to go back briefly? And the operative word at the time was briefly, but it hasn't turned out that way.

How would you have dealt with Brexit if you were in charge

>> Lee Crompton: Anyway, would, how would you have dealt with Brexit then, if, if you were in charge? And what would you have done differently in that?

>> Speaker D: I would never have taken no deal off the table. you do not. If you're playing, a hand of cards, you don't give away your trump card. you know, right at the beginning, you just don't do it. You hang on to it. And, I would never, ever have taken no deal off the table. And having achieved any sort of Brexit at all, and what we've got is not a full Brexit. I would have maximised it, you know, I would have used our new competitive abilities to compete with the eu, whereas, you know, first thing government does is put up the corporation tax to the same level as France. Well, I would have competed to make Britain attractive for investors. I would have, implemented the border controls. I would have done all the things that we can now do that we couldn't do while we were members of the EU because the rules of that club prevented us from doing so. and so I would have done it very, very differently. But we still are not members of the EU and therefore those opportunities are not entirely gone. And that's why I've signed up with reform. I think that in four years time we could have a reform government and many a slip between cup and lip, but we too could have a reform government. Then we can maximise this.

>> Lee Crompton: I mean, I'll be honest, I don't think, Brett, I don't want to get into a political right. I don't think, yeah, was. I was a Remainer.

>> Speaker D: A Remainer, yeah. Spit it out. Remain.

>> Lee Crompton: I'm a remainder. Spit it out. But, yeah, I think, I think we've ended up in this kind of muddy middle ground where we've, we didn't, we obviously didn't remain, but we didn't really kind of go, yeah, well, either we've, we were just in this kind of no man's land in the middle. Which, yeah, I don't think it. Anybody really.

>> Speaker D: I agree, you know, Brexit should have meant Brex and let us get on with it. And it hasn't.

>> Speaker D: And it won't until we've got a government that says, right, you know, we've got this now we're going to maximise.

>> Lee Crompton: I mean, do you think with reform as it is at the minute, do you mean, do you think they've got a fighting chance in four years time?

>> Speaker D: I think we've got more than a fighting chance. We're at the top now. Nearly every opinion pole, we went from zero to five members. And that I think is very important because people's attitude last time, and I know this because I was out and canvassing every day for a report, people's attitude last time was, well, reform can't win. So, you know, if they wanted Labour, they didn't want to risk the Conservatives getting in and vice versa. And that was what people said to me on the doorstep. Nobody is now saying that reform can't win because we've got five MPs. It really can be that if you vote reform, you get reform. That is the message to get over. We've got big council elections coming up on May 1st and if we perform well in that, that will just keep the idea going that you really can get a reform govern. I think it's time for that sort of change. It's time for a massive shake up in UK politics because it is in such a powerlor state.

>> Lee Crompton: Yes, I would, I would agree that it'it's time for a massive shake up. Whether reform are the answer to that.

>> Speaker D: I see reform as the answer. Do you see another answer? That's fine. Because one of the things I totally believe in, which we're losing badly is freedom of speech. It's freedom to differ. It's freedom to say that somebody's right or wrong and to do that in a respectful way. But freedom of speech is something that I grew up taking for granted. And I always use two examples of how we just used to put liberty so highly after the Second World War, people had lost husbands, sons, fathers, they'd lost limbs, they'd lost their homes, they'd lost it all to the Nazis. M and yet in this country, the fascists were still allowed to demonstrate. I mean, if it turned violent, the police got involved, they were still allowed to demonstrate, they were still allowed to hold meeting f forward 10 years. We were at the height of the Cold War. and, yet you could still stand as a communist Parliament in this country. You can get in, but you could stand. You could sell the Morning Star on street corners, you could call yourself a communist, you could address people as Comrade, Liberty was what matter liberty. And now, you know, you're hard put to even say something a simple like, you know, you think marriage is between a man and a woman or whatever it might be you'saying and, I really regret the loss of liberty on this country. And it's something else that the formm believes strongly in. And I was addressing the Cornish Reform Conference yesterday and the central part of my speech was, look, you know, you get a reform government and as long as you don't incite violence, you'll be able to express your opinions freely.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah, And I think it is important that, like you say, I think part of the problem that we've got at the minute is that things are so polarised that there is just mud sllinging. You're either on one side of the fence or the other side of the fence. It's just, there's just mudling in from one to the other. And actually for me you need to, it's all about communication, it's all about engaging with people. You might not agree with what another person says, but unless you have that dialogue, unless you have that debate and talk about things, then you're always going to be on opposite side of the fence with no common ground. And I think that's kind of, you know, the dangerous situation that we find ourselves in a lot of places in the world where no one's prepared to kind of step into the middle ground and go, well hang on a minute, let's have a conversation about this and let's, let's be, let's be sensible about it rather than standing on your side of the barricades and just chucking grenades over the top.

>> Speaker D: I mean we only got peace in Northern Ireland when John Major sanction talking to the IRs.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah, exactly.

>> Speaker D: We forget that. I mean for years the act youe understandably in it was that we didn't negotiate with the IRA because they were murderers. They were. But once talks were and initially they were very, very secret but once they were allowed, progress started to be made. But to make any progress you need goodwill on both sides.

>> Lee Crompton: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: You know, the Cold War came about not just because Thatcher and Reagan wanted it to end, but because Gorbachev wanted it to end. And similarly when the IRA decided that, you know, in the long term they were on a losing wickets and particularly after 9, 11, then you know, you could make progress. And that's what I always say about Middle east. So long as one side doesn't want to make any progress, you're not going to make progress.

>> Lee Crompton: Stuffed ye.

>> Speaker D: exactly. And that's how I think about this current business about freedom of opinion. There are those who believe no, you know, they'll abuse you as a tugh if you say a man's a man and a woman's woman and Oror old J.K. rowling for example. but until people start to think maybe, you know, we should allow some liberty until you get that, then you're actually going to have a very long long fight.

>> Lee Crompton: And thank you very much.

Anne: Nothing lasts forever. So if you're in a bad time, just remember it

I mean I'm going to finish up with one question.

>> Speaker D: Gracious me, Haven we exhausted our time.

>> Lee Crompton: So we're nearly up to our 40 minutes and I was going to finish with. If you had to sum up your biggest life lesson in one sentence, what do you think in all your 70, however many years you've. 70, 77 years. Anne, what'what's. Your biggest life lesson do you think or piece of advice that was given to you?

>> Speaker D: Nothing lasts forever. The good times don't last and the bad times don't last. So if you're in a bad time, just remember it doesn't last forever.

>> Lee Crompton: This too shall pass. Yes, thank you so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed our chat and I, wish you all the best for, for the future.

>> Speaker D: Well, I wish you all the best and I hope you're going to be interviewing me again in five years time and when you've got the all clear. And they say, we don't know why we