Arthur Scargill
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 1988
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Sue Lawley casts away Arthur Scargill, the President of the National Union of Mineworkers, who admits to being orderly in his everyday life, and that he would devise a plan to enable him to have a store of food and proper living accommodation. In choosing his music to take with him, he pays particular attention to black American jazz.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go by The London Emmanuel Choir Book: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Luxury: The Mona Lisa
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is someone who many people might like to see on a desert island. |
| 0:34.0 | Extremely popular with the men he leads, he nevertheless appears to be intensely |
| 0:39.0 | disliked by those with whom he clashes. |
| 0:42.0 | A fiery orator and a committed socialist, he's |
| 0:45.1 | defended his cause with a passion which means he cannot be ignored. He is of |
| 0:50.2 | course the president of the National Union of mine workers Arthur Scargill. |
| 0:55.0 | Arthur Scargill, like it or not, you are something of a bet noir to many. |
| 0:59.6 | How much does that worry you? |
| 1:02.3 | It doesn't worry me. it sometimes saddens me that people can have an image of a |
| 1:07.4 | person that's not true and I suspect that it's comparable with the soap operas on television. I remember my wife and daughter a few years ago |
| 1:17.1 | watching the Forsyth Saga and each week, each episode, they were absolutely condemning one of the central |
| 1:25.0 | characters Soams. And one week I came home and there was so much sympathy for |
| 1:30.3 | Soams that I couldn't believe it. I said, but hang on a second what's gone wrong? |
| 1:34.0 | And they said, well, his wife has committed adultery and gone off with another man and obviously they felt |
| 1:39.8 | terribly sorry for Soams. And it suddenly struck me that this was an image rather than the reality of the person |
| 1:46.9 | and I think what happens is that the image of Arthur Skargill |
| 1:51.2 | disguises the reality of the person and it's only when people actually meet me that they discover the real me and when they do by and large they say that you are different from the person we thought you were so So while it saddens me, I understand it. |
| 2:04.6 | Well now, Arthur, you're after this desert island and I mean who knows you may be extremely happy to get |
| 2:09.7 | away from all sorts of other people that have known what they think about you. Will you be any good at |
| 2:13.4 | fending for yourself? Oh yes I'm a dab and at making fish and ships for example and |
... |
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