Lord Alf Dubs, politician and campaigner

25:38So the people in this boarding house where my mum and I were staying said, go to the main square where the BBC were going to broadcast the election results. This was 1945, so I was 13, 14, I left the main square and the lunchtime score was something like Labour 120 and the Conservatives 30. And I heard a voice say, oh my God, it's the end of England. which was quite amusing but no I was very interested in what was happening the mines being nationalised and then of course I was in hospital in Stockport Infirmary and the consultant came down the wards and in those days when the consultant and the matron came you either had to stand to attention or write to attention because you know this was like the queen coming through or the king coming through and as he was walking by I said just a minute I've got a question to ask He said, what is it?

26:30I said, are we having a party? He said, what for? Well, the hospital's ours. It's the first day the hospital's ours. And he walked away. And I was only a child in the ward, and the other people said, hey, Alf, what's going on there? I explained. The hospital was ours. It was a day for celebration. And the health service started that day. You read politics and economics at the London School of Economics. And after you graduated, you worked as a teacher, then in advertising. But it was politics that was your calling. So you became a local councillor. In 1970, you stood for Parliament for the first time.

27:02You were defeated on that occasion. But in 1979, the year of Margaret Thatcher's landslide, you booked the trend and won Battersea South. What do you remember about the count? First of all, it was a Labour seat with a very slender majority. And so it was expected that it would fall. Most of the other Labour seats was similar or even larger majorities. They fell. And how tight was it on the night? 302 votes. Was there a recount? Yeah, there were two recounts. and each time I was ahead. And so that was it. And how did it feel? I was totally bewildered. I hadn't expected it. I wasn't emotionally prepared for it.

27:38I wasn't ideologically prepared to change my life so much. So politically I was ready for it but I wasn't emotionally ready for it. I was actually working for a local authority and so I had to leave my job, clear my desk and get myself to Westminster. And what was it like going in there for the first time? Well, first of all, there was a gloom on the Labour side because we just lost an election after years in government. Were you the one cheerful person on that side of the house? Well, yeah, it was a bit like that. And I remember I was talking to all these mighty people. I was sitting next to Jim Callaghan.

28:14We were having a chat, you know, and he just resigned as leader of the Labour Party. But there I was mixing with all these people. And I thought, gosh. and then the first time I was down to ask the Prime Minister a question I stood up and I was totally I said, is this me? Can this be me in the House of Commons actually asking the British Prime Minister a question? And I nearly forgot my question my supplementary question but I was sort of quite bewildered with myself a bit so you know, it took some time to get used to that and well, I hope I did. It's time for some more music, Alf your fifth choice.

28:48What's next? The next is a piece by Mozart I love Mozart. It's Mozart's Horn Concerto. I know some people think I must be in favour of fox hunting because it's got a sort of fox hunting air to it, but the answer is I'm not keen on fox hunting at all. But it's a lovely bit of music. It's got motion. It's got a rhythm to it. It's got a lovely feeling to it altogether, and I just think it's great to listen to, and I could listen to it all day.

29:37¶¶

30:07The Allegro from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 1 in D Major, performed by Barry Tuckwell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. So, Lord Alf Dubbs, you lost your seat in 1987, and then you became director of the Refugee Council. Now, you were the first refugee to head the charity. What impact did your own experiences have on the work that you were doing at the time? I remember we had refugees come from Bosnia. We were looking after supporting refugees from various countries. Certainly, when I talk to refugees one-to-one and they know what my background is and I know what their background is, then we immediately have a sort of fellow feeling, which is warm and makes me feel good about it because I'm talking to them and they sense I'm one of them in a way.

30:56As we've heard, Alf, you became a Labour life peer in 1994 and then in 1997 Tony Blair appointed you Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Northern Ireland under Mo Mowlem. What was it like for you going back there? Well, I think it was a terrific experience. First of all, Mo Mowlem was a fantastic boss and somehow the fact that we were moving, hopefully, towards the peace process made it a much more rewarding thing than just containing a very difficult situation. There were terrible things that happened while I was there, the Oma bombing and so on, but on the other hand I think it was also such a privilege to be there and to be there at an important time for them and for the country.

31:36You have described it as one of the proudest times in your career. What made you so proud? Well, I hope that in some way I helped to contribute towards the peace process. I hope by being there, by meeting all the key players, whether it's David Trimble, Liam Paisley, John Hume, Gerry Adams, Marty McGuinness, Seamus Mallon, all these people, important people, whatever one thinks of them. And it was such a privilege to meet them. But above all, to be able to try and make a contribution towards a better understanding and to make people in Northern Ireland realize that we cared a lot about all of them.

32:10And we cared about their lives and we cared about what we could do to make their lives better. And you were in the room when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. April 1998. What was it like? Well, Ian Paisley was outside in the snow shouting abuse and saying, you know, this is all wrong. He was totally against it. He came round in the end, but not till after being signed. And there was a lovely group of women. They set up a women's coalition. And I wandered around the various rooms chatting to them. And they were there doing their negotiating pit. And they offered me tea and cakes because that's how they were.

32:44and I think they made an important contribution to the peace process. Of course, at one point, I saw Jay Adams and Martin Beginners look as if they were leaving the building. I said, for God's sake, you're not leaving. No, no, no, it's all right, we're just going to talk. So there was all that going on and then it happened. So, Alf, you were part of making history but you had also been understanding and learning about your own history. I think you first met Sir Nicholas Nicky Winton in 1988 and obviously you'd always known that you'd come to the UK on the Kindertransport. How did you come to find out about Nicholas himself and how he had organised these trains?

33:23Well, there was a film with Esther Hansen. Most of the Kindertransport people were in it. I wasn't in it and there was that moment when she asked everybody to stand up who owed their lives to Nicholas Winton and they all stood up. Everybody stood up. So why weren't you in it? I don't know. I never discovered that. All I know is they put on the screen at one point something from his logbook of the people and my name was on it as having been part of it. Did you spot that? No, my father-in-law phoned up to say, hey, look at this quickly, you should see this, it's something going on on television.

33:53So he switched on the set and there was several names from his book of all the people who arrived on that particular train that I arrived on in June 1939. And there was my name and so on. And how did you come to meet Sir Nicholas? Well, there were a lot of events, there were birthday parties for him, There were celebrations at his house in Maidenhead. There were celebrations of his birthdays at the Czech Embassy in London. And I was so conscious of wanting to thank him and feel indebted to him and make him realize how much we all appreciated him. But there were lots of people around. And I think he took a great pride in all of us who came.

34:29Because if you take those of us who came, the 666 or whatever it was, plus our children and other members of the family, grandchildren even, And there was quite a lot of people who owed their lives directly to him. And I think he took a quiet pride in that. So we got to know him pretty well. And we got to know each other pretty well because of him. And he was very fond of you because he had quite a deep interest in politics himself, didn't he? He loved talking politics, yes. Occasionally we'd have lunch and we'd chat about politics. And he asked me about child refugees from other countries and what more we could do.

35:03He was a very modest man, but he was very, very committed. He was a lesson to us all. because when he got to Prague in 1938-39, he saw what was happening, and he said, terrible. A lot of people say terrible. He differed because he then said, and I must do something about it. He, Nicky Winton, had to do something about it. So for me, it was a great privilege to get to know him and to be a friend of his, and that was an important part of my life. Let's have some more music, Alf. It's your sixth choice today. What's next, and why are you taking it to the island? Well, it's Danny Boy. Now, there was one occasion when I heard John Hume, who's a great, great Northern Ireland politician and who was instrumental, played such a key part in breaking down barriers and getting the peace process underway.

35:52He was a very important figure in the history of Ireland. And I remember one occasion he sang Danny Boy. We were all in tears. He sang it not like a politician trying to sing. Plenty of those about. He sang it beautifully. And it reflects all the things I believe about Ireland and the emotion that associated my time there, and I hope the small part I played in helping the piece process along. Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen and down the mountainside

36:42The summer's gone Danny Boy, Daniel O'Donnell. Lord Alf Dubbs, in 2016, you tabled Section 67 of the Immigration Act, which asked the government to accept 3 ,000 unaccompanied refugee children into this country. It became known as the Dubbs Amendment. Now, you'd visited refugee camps in Calais and Greece in the lead-up to your amendment. What affected you most about what you saw there? I was very moved when I talked to some of the child refugees in particular, when they told me their stories, when they told me how they'd had these long journeys, the terrible experiences fighting, death of their families and so on, the terrible experiences that they had escaped from.

37:29People sometimes ask me, what's it like today for refugees coming to Britain compared to what it was like in 1938-39. Well, I think it's got a bit less sympathetic. Don't forget, Britain was terrific in 1938-39. Britain accepted 10 ,000 children on the Kindertransport, unaccompanied child refugees. There were arguments in the House of Commons, I read them in Hansard, about whether we should take them. But the fact is, we arrived as Kindertransport children, and I think on the whole we were made pretty welcome and given fantastic opportunities. Now, I would like to feel that refugee children coming today are given the same welcome and the same opportunities that I had.

38:12So the amendment did eventually pass, but without a government commitment on the number of children that they would bring in. And then in 2017, the government closed the scheme. So in the end, 480 children came here, which is incredible to change 480 lives for the better. But I know that you had wanted it to be a greater number. how did you feel about the achievements of the scheme and the amount of children that you were able to help? Even one refugee child coming is a victory for the human race but it was disappointing there were so few. Yes, how did you deal with the setbacks? I mean, for something that was so personal to you and with which you had this emotional connection.

38:54Well, I should be careful because I always argued that the cause of refugees shouldn't directly be influenced by the person putting forward the argument. But I could hardly fail to be more emotionally involved because of my background. Look, I never talked about this. You didn't want it to be called a Dobs Amendment. I didn't want it to be called a Dobs Amendment. And my background came out because the media dug it out. I would never have gone public in that particular way, but it turned out to be quite helpful politically. So the government's argument for closing the scheme was that it would encourage more children to make the difficult journey to the UK and encourage people smugglers.

39:31What was your response to their view? Well, I said to Theresa May on other occasions, look, we can't take everybody, but we owe it to the traditions of this country and to these young people that some of them at least should get here. And I felt that it didn't automatically follow that if some came here, others would want to take the same path. They may or may not have done. But look, I don't think we could sit back and just say, let's leave children sleeping under tarpaulins in Calais. Let's leave them without proper food and clothing. We can't do that to people. I should say this. There's an enormous difference between economic migrants.

40:10There's nothing unworthy about being an economic migrant. People are coming because we need the labour and we need people in our hospitals and care systems and so on. But there's a difference between those and people who are asylum seekers, who are a small proportion of the total, although sometimes you'd think everybody was coming across the channel by boat. By the way, I condemn the people traffickers totally, the whole people, and they put lives at stake. But I think we have to explain to people why individuals are coming here for safety. And the situation today is different from what it was before 1939, simply because television, people are more aware of people coming over and so on.

40:49And I think we have to seek an understanding. My argument is that if we explain to people what it is that these refugees are fleeing from, the terrible experiences of war, I was talking to a Syrian boy. He'd had either an uncle or a father blown up in front of him by a bomb in Aleppo or Damascus. Now, that's a shocking, shocking thing to happen to a human being. We'll be scarred for life. And I think it's important we understand what people are fleeing from and why we owe them, as fellow human beings, a duty to give safety. Not to all of them, but to some of them. We should do it with other countries together.

41:25This is not something Britain should do on its own, but we should play our part. There is a new government in place now, Alf, and in fact, Yvette Cooper, who I think was an early supporter of the Dobbs Amendment, is on the front bench. Do you think that there's more to be done on this issue? Are you still having conversations? Being in opposition is different from being in government. I understand that. And I understand there are pressures. But I think we're not going to get everything we want. And I've said to people, we expect well of this government, but if they don't do it, we'll tell them.

41:55What about those 480 children who did make it here? Have you met many of them? I've met some of them who made it here, yes, under that amendment. And, yeah, they're doing well. and I'm always happy to meet them. Of course, I can't meet more than a small proportion of them, but I'm always happy to meet refugees who come over and to share experiences with them. And what about those children saying thank you to you? How does that feel when you meet them and they thank you? Well, yeah, it's nicely appreciated, but, you know, being thanked is not that important in that sense. I think it's more important they say thank you to the people of Britain.

42:31And I always say, you know, that I want to say thank you to this country because this country's been terrific for me. Alf Tubbs, it's time to go to the music. Your penultimate disc today. What are we going to hear for disc number seven? Well, it's Leonard Cohen, Take This Waltz. Many years ago, my daughter went to a concert and she came back raving about Leonard Cohen and Take This Waltz. I got very interested ever since then. Don't forget, I'm a different age group from some of the people who know about all this music, but I think it's a terrific bit of music. I think it's emotional. It has its origins in a Spanish poet.

43:04and Lenin Cohen adapted it and I think it's a lovely lovely bit of music.

43:35In the gallery of frost

43:41Leonard Cohen and the Webb Sisters with Take This Waltz. Alf Dubbs, you've returned to Prague several times since you left as a little boy. Where did you go and what did you do when you visited? I've been on holiday there. I've been to conferences. And I once went to an event which celebrated Nicky Winton. we had a meeting on the platform at Prague Station from which the Kindertransport trains had left. It was, again, an emotional experience because it was the same platform. There was one other, I think, one other Kindertransport person, a friend of mine called Milena, and she and I were on the platform and we talked about the significance of the event and then we went out in the country to a little village where we planted trees to commemorate Nicky Winton.

44:27So these are all very, very emotional occasions. And you also regained your Czech citizenship not that long ago. I did get that. Now, look, I'm very proud to have a British passport and to be British. That was all very positive. And that was something I delighted in when I was 18. But I also felt that I came to Britain with a Czech passport and I wanted to have one so that I could freely go into the European Union. And it would all be slightly easier. And I would feel good about it. Did it feel good to have it in your hand, to have that piece of the country where you were born? I am British, you see.

45:04I made it very clear I'm totally, totally British. But one can be British and one can be European at the same time. And the Czech passport is a way of being European. And it gave me pleasure to have the Czech passport. And it's a nice feeling. It's a nice feeling to be European as well as being British. You talked earlier, Alf, about when you were a little boy and that sense of anxiety of not having a home to go back to, a kind of stable home to go back to. I wonder what home means for you today. Where do you feel most at home today? Oh, at home here, everything about me has made me British. Now, if you mean which part of the UK, I have a love affair with the Lake District.

45:43You're a keen walker for many years. I'm a keen hill walker, and I spend quite a lot of time walking the Lake District. A thousand feet up, the problems of the world seem fairly small. At 2 ,000 feet up, the problems are tiny. 3 ,000 feet up, what problems? So it's very therapeutic, as well as being utterly pleasurable. And there's a camaraderie about hill walkers. We're all friends and we do this together and it's great. And obviously we've been looking back a lot today. I mean, when you think back to that little boy who arrived six years old at Liverpool Street Station with a dog tag around his neck 80 years ago, what would he think of the life that you've been able to build here in the UK?

46:19I wouldn't have believed anything. I wouldn't have believed it possible. You know, I think this country has given me great opportunities and I would like to feel that refugees coming here today will get the same sense of being accepted and given the same opportunities as happened to me. It's almost time to send you away to the desert island, Alf, your next adventure. You're a keen outdoorsman, so I'm hoping for a hill for you on your island. Yeah, I'm hoping for that, yes. I would like to keep fit by doing something. If I'm totally cut off from the world, as I have to be on a desidane, I would like to feel that there are things I can do to stay fit and keep going.

46:58And you have the most tremendous energy. I mean, you know, you're in your 90s now, but I wonder how you'll be without the hurly-burly of political life to keep you going and keep you engaged. Well, I think I'd miss it. I'd want to know what's going on, but I'd just have to put that into cold storage and think my thoughts and adjust to a new way of life. And of course you'll have your music to keep you company, including this final disc, your last choice today, number eight. What are we going to hear? Well, Beethoven's Ode to Joy. I love it. And I think the European Union did a great job when they chose such a wonderful bit of music to be the anthem for the European Union.

47:36So it does two things for me. It gives me a nice bit of musical connection with Continental Europe and it also gives me a sense of the EU and how Europe got together in a very positive way. I regret very much we're not part of it, but Europe got together in a very positive way and this makes me feel good about Europe.

48:42CHOIR SINGS

48:52Beethoven's Ode to Joy from the fourth movement of Symphony No. 9, performed by the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Choir, conducted by Herbert Blomstead. Alf Dubs, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book with you. What will you choose? Oh, I spent so much time trying to think about it. I had so many books I wanted to bring with me. OK, years ago, I read a book by Emil Zola called Germinal. And it was a book about northern France and the coal miners and the lives they lived. And it was a very moving book, a very powerful book.

49:28It's a long time since I read it, and I look forward to reading it again. I shall sit there on my desert island, and I shall get some pleasure from a very powerful book. Absolutely, it's yours. You can also take a luxury item with you. What do you fancy? we talked about Lake District and hill walking I'm assuming that this desert island will have a mountain on it I'm assuming that will you give me a mountain on the desert island it's the island of your imagination so if you say there's a mountain on it I think there is there's a mountain and I would like I'd like a pair of walking boots and a waterproof the reason for the waterproof is that with climate change coming maybe the desert island won't be much of a desert for too long so it may rain there as well very true best to be prepared I'd like some walking boots because I would like to keep fit and I would like to reminisce about the lake to sleep when I'm on my desert island.

50:16And finally, which track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first? I find that so difficult. I think probably, thinking very fast, I think probably Johnny Coltrane. Something I'd like to listen to and listen to and listen to. And I'd like it as a background for a lot of the things I'm doing on the desert island. I'll go for Coltrane. I think it's a great choice. Lord Elf Dubs, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, thank you for giving me the chance to take part.

51:03Hello.

51:07I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Alf and I really hope he'll enjoy bestriding his own mountain on the island. We've cast away many politicians, including Theresa May, Baroness May of Maidenhead and Sakia Starmer. Former refugees Dr Waheed Aryan and Aminka Helich are in our archive too. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. The production coordinator was Susie Roilance. The content editor was Mugabe Turia. And the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the documentary maker, Norma Percy. I do hope you'll join us.

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