Latest / The Fourcast / Chris Bryant MP on sexuality, abuse, and his time as a priest

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Chris Bryant MP on sexuality, abuse, and his time as a priest · The Fourcast

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It's something that sat in my heart for a very, very long time
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because I feel all the shame and guilt that we're not that I
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think many gay young men at that time grew up with generally
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about their own sexuality, felt really concentrated in that
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moment. And I hadn't told many people at
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all until two or three years ago.
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And then when I told a couple of people then I couldn't stop
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crying. So there's probably more hurt in
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me about it than I would recognize.
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Hello and welcome to the forecast.
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His new book is called A Life and a Half, The Unexpected
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Making of a Politician. But really, Chris Bryant's
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biography is a tale of multiple lives.
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There's the Oxford educated Anglican priest turned Labour
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councillor, MP, government minister and now knight of the
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realm. And there's also childhood in
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fascist Spain, in a dysfunctional family, the home
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he found on stage at the National Youth Theatre and the
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sexual assault that came with it, and the spirited embracing
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of his sexuality, which combined protest, prejudice and quite a
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lot of partying. So who is the real Sir Chris
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Bryant? He joins me now.
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You, you are this contradiction, aren't you, in that your very
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establishment, in some ways, you know, Oxford politics, the
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church, and yet you kick against it all.
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I, I feel as if I've, I've occupied a niche in virtually
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every portico in the establishment over some at some
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point that you, you, you've left out the BBC as well.
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So the BBC, the Church of England, Oxford and all the rest
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of it. Yes, very much.
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And I went to prep school, public school, all the rest of
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it. And yet, and yet I didn't end up
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a Tory MPI didn't end up in, and you know, working in the city or
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whatever, or a barrister. I ended up as a Labour MP for
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the Rhondda in South Wales. Yes, and, and I suppose part of
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what the book when, when, when my editor was saying, well, what
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we going to call this book that was part of the thinking behind
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it was I'd, I'd keep on quoting this line from Stephen
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Sondheim's Follies. And then she careered from
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career to career. And there is a bit of that about
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my previous life. And I suppose part of the reason
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for writing it was wanting to work out how did I end up being
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the person I am? And are there things that I
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still need to correct about myself?
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Yeah, I mean, the the book is, there's a great deal in the book
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about childhood and family and then young adulthood.
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There's an awful lot in there about sexuality and being gay
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and how you felt about it along the way.
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Is it too much? No, but I mean it.
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It makes you feel as though that's been quite a a very
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defining thing for you. Oh, it has.
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I mean, well, I mean, of course it is.
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You know, working out your own sexuality is a really important
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part of working out who you are. And, and I guess you know that
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there's a generation of people who've grown up in now who had
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no idea that when I was born, it was a criminal offence to have
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for a man to have sex with a man.
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And when I all through my, my time at university and the age
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of consent for gay sex was 21. So anything I did at university
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with another man was completely illegal.
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And so that, you know, understanding that and then the
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moment of liberation that came when the laws changed and when
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things were possible for people to live a life together.
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It is, is one of the parts of the story I really wanted to
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tell. I mean, for instance, I, I tell
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the story of telling my mum that I was gay.
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She's coming to stay with me. Her, her life was a bit of a
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mess. She was coming to stay with me.
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By this time I was already an Anglican priest and, and I said
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to her, look, I'm gay. And she says to me two things.
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First of all, well, I should, she should always have known
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because I have such a funny walk.
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You're not allowed to look at me as I leave just to check.
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But also she said, Oh, but the, the, I mean, the terrible thing
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is, of course, Christopher, you'll be lonely in old age
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because that was the fundamental belief that everybody had about
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gay men in particular, that in old age they will be lonely.
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Maybe for lesbians like the old ladies of Llangocklan from in,
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you know, the 19th century, it will be different.
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But for men, you would be lonely in old age.
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And that's why it's such an amazing thing to live in a
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generation where I can talk about having a husband.
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I mean you, you talk about for quite a long time, not really
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knowing what your sexuality was, having a girlfriend, a partner,
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but but not really thinking, not really being sure what you.
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No, well, and I was at I went to Cheltenham College and there
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were only boys at Cheltenham College in those days that there
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was Cheltenham Ladies College down the road.
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But the, the, the twain should never ever meet was the was the
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kind of rule except that I, I don't know what inspired me, but
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I wanted to act in every single play.
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I wanted to sing in every single Choral Society because that
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meant I could spend time with girls and I and when I was at
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school, I had quite a lot of girlfriends.
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And then it was my wonderful girlfriend Donna, great singer,
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who when she woke me up 1 morning, I mean, I probably
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wasn't meant to be sleeping with anybody because I was a priest
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in the Church of England. And she said, Crystal, you do
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know you're gay, by the way, don't you?
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And and then it, it's not that I, I don't feel it's like it was
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something I came to terms with it just kind of I settled into
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it. Did you not want to be gay, You
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know? Well, it's not that I wanted to
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fight it, it's more that I kind of presumed that I wouldn't be
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because the world presumes that you won't be.
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And, and incidentally, it still does today that, you know,
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understandably, the vast majority of people are not gay.
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And so the assumption is you'll get married to somebody from the
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other sex, you'll have children and, and you know, you'll,
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you'll maybe have a couple of dogs or a cat or whatever, and,
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and then you'll have doting grandchildren around you in old
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age. And, and of course that that
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whole world has changed for many people's expectations now.
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But for me, Oh, and of course I was involved in the Church and
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the church when back, back in those days had a kind of don't
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ask, don't tell kind of line. And then it kind of worked out
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that that didn't work anymore. And I knew so many priests in
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the Church of England who'd long given up their faith.
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They used to go on holiday to Mykonos or Sitches or Fort
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Lauderdale or whatever, have affairs whilst they're away.
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Desperately hoped that there wouldn't be anybody from the
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Daily Mail or the News of the World there and and then come
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back and have to live a life of complete celibacy and and a
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hidden life. And then they'd be terribly
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bitter. I.
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Mean do you think you might have been a Bishop or a or a cabinet
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minister? Well, if you hadn't been gay.
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I know that we're looking for an Archbishop of Canterbury and I
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am still available technically. Oh, I don't know.
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I was told, I remember going to see Bill Westwood, who was the
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Bishop of Peterborough when I was the youth chaplain from the
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for the Diocese of Peterborough. And I said, look, I'm leaving.
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I'm 29. I know this isn't right for me.
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I'm a gay man. And he said to me, it's one of
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the stories in the book. He said, look, Christopher, if
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only you knew how to keep your mouth shut, you could have enjoy
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all the things that I do. You'd get to be a Bishop and
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you'd be he'd have regular lunches with Margaret Thatcher.
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Now for me, Margaret Thatcher was anathema a from a Christian
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perspective because I just thought that what she was doing
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was despicable and wrong for the country, but equally because she
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she'd just done a great big speech about how homosexuals
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shouldn't expect that they had a right to exist.
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And so, and then introduced Clause 28.
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So for me, it was part of what, you know, stirred the, the
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political pot for me, I think, and transformed me from the, the
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little Tory who arrived at Oxford and to, to, you know, the
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young lad who went off to Latin America to look at liberation
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theology and understand what, what, how Christians could
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respond in a world of phenomenal poverty.
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And what? Why were you the Tory who went
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to Oxford? Was that because of parents?
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Yeah, so I, you know, my life started in Cardiff, but my
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parents originally met when mum was a makeup artist.
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She looked after Shirley Bassey's wigs and dad, dad had
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grown, you know, left school at the age of 15, not many
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qualifications. Went to work in Spain in a in a
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summer on in a hotel and they met and mum and dad then
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married. They produced me and every
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summer mum, dad used to go and work in Spain, in the hotel in
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Salao and and so we. And then he quite he quite liked
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the fascists. Oh yes.
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And I think, well, he always thought that we, everybody had
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misinterpreted what Franco was about.
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My first political memory is, is driving to the, in a misty day
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when we were living in Madrid, driving to past Caravan Shell,
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which was the political prison not far from where we lived in
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Madrid and seeing all the guards that gather the Athi Ville with
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their black patent leather Tricon hats, long capes and
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submachine guns because Franco was coming to visit.
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And that was my first memory of totalitarian or my impression of
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totalitarian government. I mean, it was meant to inspire
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fear and it did inspire fear. But dad's view was rather
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different. He, he and, and hardly anybody
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in those days, British people used to go to Spain because of
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Franco. But we we did and we lived there
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from from me for the age of 7 to 12.
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I remember very clearly one day, we'd only recently arrived going
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down, I was playing in the street.
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I don't know what I was doing, playing with a stick and making
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marks in the sand And some kids coming up to me and saying, oh,
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yeah, oh, yeah, Oh yeah. Belli Rojo, ginger.
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And and then tie me to a tree and flicking pine cones at me
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because I couldn't speak Spanish.
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So I learned Spanish pretty quickly.
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But in terms of sort of how life might have.
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Oh, but you were asking me how did I become the Tory that went
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to Oxford? So.
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So we. You know, were you, were you,
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were you made a Tory basically by your upbringing.
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Because I went, I went when we lived in Spain, I was sent back
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to boarding school in Scotland. I tell some interesting stories
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about boarding school in Scotland.
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Sex comes into that as well. And then I went to Cheltenham
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College because we'd moved back to the UK, We were living in
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Cheltenham and the kind of expectation was that everybody
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would be a Tory. Whoever went to Cheltenham
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College, that I mean, it was built to produce soldiers or
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administrators for the Raj. So that was the common kind of
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expectation. Though what I did in at
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Cheltenham College was act and singing choirs.
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And so my life was kind of different.
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But by by the time I arrived at Oxford, I was I, I was, I became
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a member of the Conservative Party partly to make sure that
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William Hay didn't win the the leadership of the Conservative
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Association, which in which I succeeded.
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Though he says everywhere that I wore a cravat every day, I was a
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doctor. This is completely untrue.
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I might have owned a cravat, but I'm not sure that I wore it.
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What? Why did you dislike William
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Hague? Because he was on the anti
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European sort of hard line end of the Conservative Party, the
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Thatcherite end of the Conservative Party.
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And so, and during my time at Oxford, I, I certainly changed.
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I think one of the things that also changed me was the National
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Youth Theatre. So I first went to the National
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Youth theatre when I was 15. I was the only public school
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boy, I think in the, in the Myti absolutely loved it.
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I met people from every other experience.
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I was a 15 year old on my own in London without any parental
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supervision and I had all the freedom in the world and that
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sort of changed my outlook and stuff as well.
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And then I went to Latin America as part of my training for the
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priesthood in 1986 and I spent months in a shantytown in Peru,
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in Lima, commerce and saw things.
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I saw a country that had phenomenal wealth, I mean, such
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extraordinary fruit and veg, and yet people who died of
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starvation and a very violent continent.
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And there was a curfew on at the time because of the activities
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of Sendero Luminoso. And then I went, it was in
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Argentina just after the dictatorship had ended, and I
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knew friends who'd been tortured.
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And then I was in Chile. I had to leave Chile.
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So, so the journey from right to left was over that that period.
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I mean, you also sort of imply from the book that it was, it
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was Section 28 that. It was.
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Certainly big you against the Tories.
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Well, I couldn't understand why anybody would bring forward
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legislation to restrict people's freedoms.
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I just thought everybody should be treated equally under the
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law. And of course, it mattered
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personally to me as well. Yes.
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And also I, I thought I saw, I suppose I was infuriated by
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hypocrisy in the church, all sorts of different kinds of
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hypocrisy. When I was at Theological
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College, Cudston, there was a strange thing called the Deanery
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of Muns. It was a toilet on the top floor
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in the college. And the top floor had 12 rooms
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and the 12:00 rooms could elect the new Dean who would be
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enthroned on the toilet. And there was all sorts of
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religious paraphernalia put in this toilet.
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You could say it was harmless fun, except that mine was the
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first year when there wasn't just one woman in the college.
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There were 13 women in the college.
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So suddenly the men, some of the men, in particular the gay men,
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wanted to kind of ostracize the women.
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And, and for us, some of us on the feminist liberal side who
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wanted to sort the ordination of women and so on, getting rid of
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the Deanery of Muns was a symbol.
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So we just dismantled it. One night we took it all out and
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dumped it outside the door of somebody who's actually now a
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Bishop, and we were hounded. For the rest of that year nobody
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would talk to us and that kind of hypocrisy in the church which
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I associated with hypocrisy within the Tory party, all
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became part of the same thing I. Mean obviously you've got to get
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through a lot of stuff in a book like this.
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So you're, you're covering 40 years, but there are two big
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turning points in your life that I, I feel I kind of, I want more
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on, you know, 1 is why you became a priest and the other is
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why you went into politics. Now, when you talk about going
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into the church, I mean you, you say you didn't have a sort of a
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sudden religious calling a moment.
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So what was it? Well, I had a sort of moment
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which I describe in the book, which was we were, I was on tour
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with the National Youth Theatre. We were taking two productions,
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Richard the 2nd and Good Lads at Heart round Europe.
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We opened the new Royal Theatre in The Hague, for instance, but
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and it was when before a tech rehearsal for one of the shows
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that I remember walking into a cathedral and having a feeling
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that I should do something more with my life than just
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frivolity. It's nothing more than that.
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It's not sudden. I can't hear angels or anything
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and there's not a great big finger pointing down at me and
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say, you know, come and do this. But the church is quite a thing
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to decide to do from that, isn't that?
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I mean, there are all sorts of things you could have decided to
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do. True.
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And of course, in the end I ended, I, I chose other things
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to do, but I, I think it was partly so my mum was alcoholic
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in, in and it destroyed, you know, my teenage years were
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really rough because of that. I ended up being the man of the
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house. Dad left and that he was right
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to leave because mum was such a mess.
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I was doing the ironing, I was doing the cooking, I was doing
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everything really in the house. And, and it, it was just on a
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daily basis, it was just utter misery.
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It was the lies. It was the, have you been
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drinking, Mum? No, what's that water, Mum?
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It's clearly vodka. And then, you know, the rows
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and, and I said probably horrible, horrible things to mum
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for which I still feel guilty. And she said horrible things
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back and then she'd fall and then I'd be taking her to the
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hospital or, and then or sometimes I took her through DTS
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and all of that. And two things I think from that
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that mattered were one was that I found that I was actually
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quite a resilient person. I didn't fall apart.
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And that's not because I'm a fundamentally good person.
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It's just because I had some kind of strength which I thought
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I shouldn't just use for myself. And the other thing is that
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nearly everybody who supported me during those times was
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involved in the church. My English teacher Tim Pearce at
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Cheltenham College or in my final year.
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Things at home were so terrible that I had to live with the
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school chaplain and his wife, Sam and Margaret Salter.
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And Margaret says, well, she's, she's no longer with us.
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But Margaret used to say that because I was so grumpy at
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breakfast time, they just used to leave me.
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I still am instantly. They just used to leave me
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completely on my own for 15 minutes with the Guardian.
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And that's what changed my politics.
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That's what she reckons my, my dad always read the Daily
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Telegraph. Suddenly I was reading the
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Guardian. So I think it's that
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combination. And so it meant that the my
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first day at Oxford, my first Sunday, I went to church.
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I chose to go to church. Because you start off talking
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about how there's another itch I can never scratch enough.
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I have always wanted to change the world.
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The sense that something just isn't fair drives me crazy.
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I mean, is that a post hoc explanation of your life or is
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that? Conscious of how you felt.
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I, I, I think so the thing about alcoholism as a, as a child of
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an alcohol is, is you just feel so powerless and it makes you so
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angry. And then you feel guilty about
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feeling angry with the person that you want to love.
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And then you feel angry that they're making you feel guilty.
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And so it's, it, I mean, it all gets wrapped up into this
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horrible, horrible thing of powerlessness.
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And so I, I mean in a way the, the, the thing that I think now
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and, and it's, it was very striking to me when I was doing
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the audio book. So reading it out six months
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after the last take, as it were, that of when I've been writing
18:19
it. And what struck me was, well,
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actually, you felt powerlessness.
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You hate feeling powerless. And that's true today too.
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And so you want to exercise power.
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That's probably why I'm a politician.
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Yes, well, that, that, that. Well, that was the next term,
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isn't it? That you you, you leave the.
18:39
Church, but but I think also, I mean, it's worse.
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I, you know, my, my theology, my religion was never, you know,
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praying to a God with a great big beard up in the sky.
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It was never that kind of it. Was primarily about helping
18:51
people rather than a spiritual. Well, I not not least because I,
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I, I, I don't think Jesus was very interested in metaphysical
18:58
issues. He was much more interested in
18:59
practical teaching about how we live our lives here on this
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earth. I mean, do do you, do you have
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faith? Do you believe in?
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Yes, I have. I have a faith, but it's the
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faith I always had. How literal is it when it comes
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to? Oh, it's never literal.
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I mean, and, and, and fundamentalism I abhor in
19:15
politics or religion or anything like that.
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I, I have a very pragmatic Christianity and I have a very
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pragmatic understanding of politics that it's that that is
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always the same. But I, I refer to a word that I
19:26
really, really love in Spanish, which is ochala.
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It's a, it's actually a sort of Arabic word and it means I sort
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of, I wish or would that or if only.
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And, and that's a really strong part of what I, what every
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single day I wake up with, which is if only I could change this,
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if only I could be this, if only I could, if only Gaza were
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different or whatever. I mean, it's hundreds and
19:54
hundreds of things that I feel that about all the time.
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And sometimes that powerlessness is so oppressive that you,
20:00
that's when you you want to burst out with rage and change
20:03
the world. And, and that's why you decided
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to go to party politics, which is why you wanted to be an MP,
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because you thought, well, that that's how I can change the
20:11
world. Well, partly because I decided I
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could no longer do the Church because I didn't want to end up
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being a bitter, twisted priest in a parish, you know, not able
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to leave the Tide Cottage because I couldn't afford it,
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But. And no longer.
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So you entered another deeply hypocritical world in which.
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People. Well, no.
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What I mean is in which people were were equally hiding their
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sexuality and being hypocritical about all those sorts of things
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as well. Well, I didn't think, I didn't
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think of it that and I don't think of it in that way.
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I think of it as a place where you have to be honest, as honest
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as you can. And and incidentally, I mean,
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one of the things that's strange about writing a book like this,
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which is of course inherently narcissistic.
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So I've made myself feel guilty about that as well.
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And then crossing myself for feeling guilty is that you you
20:58
do have to check some of the things that you always thought
21:02
were facts. My mother always said that her
21:04
my father played for Glasgow Rangers.
21:07
I didn't believe her, but it's true.
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He did amazingly and had pretty good good career footballing
21:15
career. But other things I've had to
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check to make sure that my memory is actually accurate.
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Which turned out not to be. Sometimes they it's turned out
21:22
to be no, I I can't possibly have been there.
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I mean it just doesn't add up or or sometimes I've had to.
21:28
Things have been in in a wrong order in my mind and and working
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out the order is kind of intriguing.
21:34
We'll, we'll come back to politics, but I mean, one of the
21:37
big stories that you've revealed is about the National Youth
21:41
Theatre in your time there. And you've, you've, you've done
21:45
this in the press as well. In that you've, you've revealed
21:48
that you were sexually abused by the founder of the National
21:53
Youth Theatre, Michael Croft. Why?
21:58
Why did you come out with this now?
22:03
How about how you know? Had you built up to it for a
22:05
long time? Had you?
22:07
So it's a story that's always been there.
22:11
No, it's something that sat in my heart for a very, very long
22:18
time because not because I feel particularly traumatized by it,
22:27
but because I feel all the shame and guilt that were not that I
22:32
think many gay young men at that time grew up with generally
22:36
about their own sexuality felt really concentrated in that
22:40
moment. I tell the story as matter of
22:44
factly as I can in the book, so I.
22:47
Why do you tell it matter of factly?
22:49
It's interesting that the way you tell it for something that's
22:53
so emotional. And I hadn't told many people at
22:57
all until two or three years ago.
22:59
And then when I told a couple of people then I couldn't stop
23:02
crying. So it probably is more, there's
23:08
probably more hurt in me about it than I would recognise or I
23:12
would want to recognise. And probably I like to think of
23:18
myself as resilient and so therefore I am resilient, if
23:20
that makes any kind of sense. So I told so in essence, I, I,
23:27
I'd done a years. I, I, I've been in the, I was in
23:32
the National Youth Theatre my first year on a course for in
23:34
when I was 15, I got to know Michael Croft.
23:36
He was the founder of the National Youth Theatre.
23:38
I clearly became a bit of a favorite and a protege fairly
23:41
quickly. The next spring I, he, he rang
23:43
up my mother and said, would Chris come and help with the
23:45
auditions in Bristol? I'm a 16 year old and I'd go and
23:49
stay in Bristol and stay overnight.
23:50
And you know, he, he, I mean in, in separate hotel rooms.
23:54
But nonetheless, you know, we go to dinner, he wants me to come
23:56
back and have a whiskey in his room with him and all that kind
23:58
of stuff. But I kind of work out very
24:01
quickly then. And when, when I then joined the
24:04
season that year that the best way to deal with Michael was to
24:07
make sure if he had another glass of port, he would fall
24:10
asleep and then it would be fine.
24:12
But he used to take me to dinner regularly.
24:14
We would chat. I would unburden myself about
24:17
all the stuff at home. I was, you know, that's this is
24:19
the the worst point in my with the stuff with mum and and then
24:25
one night my normal plan just didn't go right.
24:30
There wasn't any ports. I I was back at his house.
24:33
I went off to the loo. He came back.
24:35
He was just wearing a kind of silk dressing gown and nothing
24:40
underneath apart and said, he said come and suck on this.
24:47
And I, I mean, of course it's terrible.
24:52
It's, you know, he was abusing his position of trust as much as
24:56
anything else. And I know there are other
25:01
people in the National Youth Theatre who went through the
25:03
same and who went through much, much, much, much worse.
25:05
After that. Michael never did it again.
25:07
And I ended up doing his funeral because he asked me to.
25:11
Yes, I mean your you know your your friendship, relationship
25:14
with him our. Friendship indeed, and.
25:20
How do you explain that now? I mean, do you, do you think you
25:22
were sort of basically still groomed or, or, or was it a
25:27
genuine friendship? I mean, what you know, you
25:28
officiated at his funeral, I mean.
25:31
I think it was a genuine friendship and I didn't.
25:33
I didn't feel destroyed by it, but I know that there were
25:35
others who had put him much, much worse situations than me.
25:39
And one of the reasons I decided to, to include it in the book
25:43
was because I, I, I know that there are others and I, and I
25:49
mean, the response since this came out in some of the press, I
25:51
mean, most, the vast majority of people have been gorgeous and
25:55
lovely and, and very supportive and understanding.
25:57
Some people have been utterly vile, you know, and said, you
26:01
know, aid refused to believe me, said it's just despicable.
26:05
You're just trying to sell a book and all that kind of stuff.
26:09
And and that's when you kind of realise why lots of women never
26:14
go to the police when they've been raped, why lots of people
26:18
have never bothered to say when they've been abused, because you
26:24
end up getting as much of the abuse in social media as anybody
26:29
else did. Why do you think people have
26:32
some people have reacted like that?
26:34
Is it? Is it because they knew him or
26:37
is it? No, no, no, no.
26:39
Oh, I have. No, I've, I've not spoken to
26:42
anybody who knew Michael. Who's that?
26:45
No, these, these are people just emailing me because it's easy to
26:47
find an MP, isn't it? And send them an e-mail or send
26:49
them a message on social media. And I mean, look, I'm, I'm not,
26:59
I don't, I refuse to be a victim in it, if you see what I mean.
27:05
Yes. I'm telling what happened
27:08
because I I think that too often abuse of that nature happened in
27:14
a lot of organizations and nobody ever owned up to it.
27:18
And that is a fundamental failing and we need to change
27:22
that whole culture. That's why I told the story.
27:25
And you, you, you, you sort of brought the National Youth
27:28
Theatre in on your. Completely.
27:29
Oh yeah, no, I mean I, I. Told and I should say they they
27:32
sort of said that they, you know, they've got safeguarding,
27:35
you know, practices in place now and then I.
27:37
I've talked through all their safeguarding practices and I
27:40
know that the National Youth Theatre is a fundamentally safe
27:42
place and I and I think any modern youth organization would
27:46
be absolutely well apart from the else.
27:50
The law is much clearer now than it ever was, and everybody knows
27:52
what their responsibilities are. Yeah, what do you.
27:55
I mean, I, I should also say just for transparency, I'm on
27:57
the Development Board of the National Youth Theatre was also
27:59
in it as you were about 10 years after you, but.
28:02
Oh, so you're younger than me? Is that the point you're?
28:03
Making no, no, I I was just very slow, but but I just say that
28:09
just for. I mean, I think that so I, and I
28:12
think that you think it's a wonderful organization and, and,
28:15
and if, if I'm weighing the balance of was the National
28:18
Youth Theatre good for me or not?
28:20
It was 100% transformative in a wonderful, wonderful way.
28:24
It's not just that all those, you know, vocal exercises,
28:28
pataka pataka, pataka pataka Papa get a petal copper plate to
28:31
kettle, all of that kind of stuff.
28:32
It's, it's, it gave me a different set, a new family.
28:37
I mean, Ed Wilson, who was Michael Croft's successor, and
28:40
Brian Lee, they were absolutely adorable with me.
28:42
I went on holiday with them and Daniel Craig and others and, and
28:46
they were really important to me when I was leaving the church
28:49
because they were church people as well.
28:51
They were really important to me in in providing me with that
28:54
kind of transition into a new world.
28:58
And how can we be more confident now that these?
29:03
Well, I certainly am in, in relation to the National Youth
29:05
Theatre because, and I've gone through all, you know, they've
29:08
talked me through all the, everything that happens and it
29:10
is extremely rigorous. Nobody works in the National
29:13
Youth Theatre unless they've gone through not just the simple
29:16
BDSM checks, but the, but the full second level as well.
29:20
And, and I, I, I mean, I tell another story in the book about
29:25
when I went, when I applied to Oxford and I was interviewed by
29:29
a tutor at Saint Kat's and he made me read out a, an essay on
29:34
a poem by Shelley Montblanc, which is a difficult poem,
29:38
sitting on a toilet whilst he lay in the bath soaping himself.
29:43
Now, I mean, some people said to me, well, why haven't, why, why
29:46
didn't you report that? Well, because I, I assumed I
29:49
wouldn't then get into Oxford. So of course I didn't.
29:52
And that's the abuse, isn't it? It's the abuse of the position
29:55
of trust and of power that that still makes me really, really
29:59
angry. Do you think it makes you a
30:00
better politician? Well, I, I don't think there's
30:05
any points to a politician unless they've got some kind of
30:07
edge to them and, and an understanding of humanity and
30:11
what it is to, to be human and take some of the knocks.
30:15
And there are lots of different ways of, you know, taking the
30:20
knocks and proving your resilience in life, I suppose.
30:22
And I think you want people to be resilient but also sensitive
30:26
enough to the world around them that they don't, you know, that
30:29
they're not completely out of touch.
30:33
Yeah. And I suppose this this comes
30:34
back to sort of the, what the real Chris Bryant is, I suppose,
30:38
you know, in terms of sort of when you talk about edge, do you
30:41
see yourself as that person who has to kick from the inside?
30:46
Yes, I I, I mean. You know you join all these
30:50
establishments, Yes. Do you know do you do that?
30:54
Oh, I've always wanted to fit in.
30:56
To fit in rather than. Change them?
30:57
Yeah, well, no, I've wanted to fit in, but also to change them.
31:00
And that's a difficult. I mean, you know, when you're a
31:03
I'm a minister. I'm not here as a minister now,
31:06
but I'm a minister in the government and I'm part of a
31:08
team and I and I and I always want to be part of a team.
31:11
I think teamwork is it's why I'm a socialist.
31:14
And I would use the word socialist to quote John Dunne,
31:19
no man is an island in tar and to himself seek not to know for
31:21
whom the bell tolls. It tolls for the I am a part of
31:24
humanity and I I am passionate about that.
31:30
But it's funny, some people have looked at the photos in the book
31:34
and they said you still stand in exactly the same way as when you
31:37
were a 7 year old child with one my right foot always slightly
31:41
forward. And I think Matthew Paris in his
31:45
autobiography wrote that you, you can never really understand
31:48
the man unless you've understood the, the, the child because it,
31:52
that's when you feel most keenly and so on.
31:54
I'm, I'm not sure that's entirely true.
31:56
I still feel just as keenly as ever before.
31:57
But I think all the things that course through my veins now
32:01
course through my veins when I was an 8910 year old.
32:05
Yes, but I but I suppose what having joined, well, wanting to
32:08
join the team and be part of the team can sometimes make people
32:12
then look away, shut up, keep quiet, not complain, not demand
32:19
more. Are you, are you one of those or
32:21
are you one of those people who internally is more of a
32:25
troublemaker, wants to kick against things, wants to change
32:28
things? I don't think of myself as a
32:30
troublemaker, but I do think of myself as being independently
32:34
minded. There's a funny thing, you know,
32:38
there's a, there's a photo in the book of me theoretically in
32:43
the cricket team at school when I'm 12, I think, except
32:47
everybody else is in cricket wise and I'm, I'm the scorer.
32:50
So I'm part of the team, but I'm not really part of the team.
32:53
And, and weirdly I've got my eyes closed.
32:56
I don't know why. Maybe it's just the way that
32:59
maybe it's just the way the photo was taken.
33:00
But, and I sometimes feel that's me, that I'm in the team, but
33:07
just slightly to one side, which is maybe that's what a Labour
33:12
person always feels. Because you, you, you don't want
33:18
to accept the world the way it is.
33:19
You do want to change it, whether it's the establishment
33:23
or it's just the world. I mean, you know, I remember
33:26
when I was at theological college, it used to drive me
33:28
insane if people asked us to sing.
33:31
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made
33:34
them high and lowly and ordered their estate.
33:36
I mean, where on earth did anybody get that idea from?
33:39
Not from Jesus. But but it's interesting that
33:41
that you joined institutions where as a gay man, you, you
33:46
know, you were not easily going to be accepted as part of the
33:49
team ever and and what you know and arguably may still not be.
33:54
No. Well, it's interesting in
33:55
politics. And you didn't go in, you didn't
33:57
stick with acting where you probably could have been
34:00
accepted as part of the team. Why do you think that is?
34:06
I don't know, I mean. You know you.
34:10
Politics for me started my first elected office, was a Hackney
34:15
councillor, and I tell some awful stories about what Hackney
34:19
politics was like back in those days.
34:22
Absolutely vile and horrible homophobia being thrown around
34:26
all over the place. I, you know, but I also tell
34:30
stories of phenomenal gay abandoned at a particular time.
34:34
My I, the day I had stopped being a vicar.
34:39
So my last sermon was at Peterborough Cathedral on Maundy
34:43
Thursday in 1991. I drive down to London.
34:46
All my furniture has gone ahead of me and is now stacked up in
34:48
a, in a flat in London, in Hackney.
34:51
I walk in the flat and I think, oh Lord, I'm not going to do
34:54
anything about this now. So I put on the tight white
34:56
T-shirt and a pair of Levi fiber ones, the official, you know,
35:01
regulation uniform of the day for a gay man.
35:04
Go off to the London Apprentice, a club that no longer exists,
35:07
whether it's Black Walls, walk up to the bar, order myself a
35:11
pint. And then suddenly realized, just
35:13
as it's already been poured, that I haven't got my wallet
35:16
with me. And a young man standing next to
35:18
me, balls, shorts, ginger with a Glaswegian accent, said to me,
35:22
it's all right, I'll pay and you don't even have to have sex with
35:25
me. And it was Jimmy Somerville
35:27
who's who'd provided the, the, the, the kind of soundtrack to
35:31
my life, as it were, of, of coming out.
35:34
And and that was a phenomenal period of change in the 1990s,
35:40
AIDS still around, very much so. And and a generation of gay men
35:45
slightly older than me had all gone.
35:48
All gone. But if that's what you mean by
35:52
the period of liberation, do you that's the 90s?
35:54
The 90s yeah, completely before I became an MP and and then I
35:59
worked for the BBC, did various different things, worked for the
36:01
Labour Party for a while. I was there kind of at the
36:04
beginning of New Labour. First met Peter Mandelson in The
36:08
Changing. Room I was YMCA You you, you
36:10
tell a couple of funny stories about Peter Mandelson in the
36:13
changing room with the YMCA and also in a in in a couple of gay
36:18
bars. Yes, we went to Paris to go
36:20
there once. Picking up people.
36:21
Picking, well, I'm not sure he'd managed in the end, but yes, he
36:24
was trying. Though.
36:26
I think my favorite is I was dating a Spanish architect at
36:30
the time called Federico, and in Madrid, and the only person who
36:32
D won any elections anywhere in Europe for years, on the left
36:35
was Philippe Gonzalez, the leader of the Spanish Socialist
36:38
Party. And so I was staying with
36:41
Federico for a couple of weeks and Peter decided to invite
36:44
himself because there was a general election in Spain and he
36:46
wanted to see how they won elections.
36:48
So Peter came and stayed with us, and I then went around with
36:51
him to all the various party election meetings and did all
36:54
the translating for him. We were at the very last kind of
36:57
reception or big kind of rally of the campaign.
37:01
Pedro had just done Philippe, rather had just done his big
37:04
speech. And we were asked, would we like
37:06
to come and meet Philippe Gonzalez?
37:07
And I'm really, really excited thinking this is my political
37:09
hero. And Peter goes, no, I want to
37:12
meet him over there. So we went and chatted to
37:15
Antonio Banderas for half an hour instead, and then he sent
37:19
me back for his autograph. Have you have you checked any of
37:22
these stories with him? But he doesn't mind putting them
37:24
out. Members that story.
37:25
There's there's a particularly funny one in a bar of him
37:27
pretending to be someone he isn't.
37:28
Well, yes, because he, so we were in a bar.
37:30
We were in Le Quezal in Paris, which has a very long but, or
37:33
used to have, I don't know whether it exists anymore
37:35
actually, but it had a very long bar.
37:36
And Peter's going I like him over there and I go, why are you
37:41
going to? No, you go and tell him what I
37:43
I'm not going to tell him that you fancy him.
37:45
You can do your own dirty work. Anyway, eventually he does go
37:48
over to him and he says hello, my name is Mark.
37:50
And the guy goes, no, it's not. You're Peter Mandelson.
37:53
We were at Oxford together. They then chatted away for the
37:56
rest of the evening. But anyway, yes, my husband
38:00
said. All right, there are too many
38:01
Peter Mandelson stories. But have you, have you checked
38:04
with Lord Mandelson as he is now?
38:07
I have. He's OK.
38:08
Well, I checked the Bishop story.
38:10
There's quite a few bishops, Well, and for that matter, drag
38:13
Queens in the book as well. Quite a lot of drag Queens.
38:16
I used to love Julie Paid, who used to perform at Molly Moggs
38:19
and used to get on the bus with the mic while singing, I don't
38:23
know, a baccarat song or something like that.
38:26
Get Sorry, I Can boogie or yes Sir, I'm a Lady, Carry on
38:31
singing on the bus as it went up Tottenham Court Road.
38:34
There are Japanese tourists looking completely enough
38:36
bemused, let alone the people sitting on the bus.
38:39
I mean, so it's come back to sort of changing the world.
38:42
I mean, you've been in politics for a couple of decades now.
38:44
I mean, is the fact that you stayed in it an indicator that
38:49
you think you are succeeding? Succeeding.
38:54
I mean, there's, I think there are things that I'm really,
38:56
really proud of that I fought for over the years.
38:59
I, I think I'm probably, I was probably the first person in the
39:04
British Parliament who called out Putin long, long before
39:08
2014. And I was certainly the only
39:10
person in 2014 who said if, if we allow him to take Crimea, he
39:14
will come for the rest of Ukraine.
39:16
And I got condemned as a warmonger for it and all the
39:19
rest of it back in 2014. I'm proud of the campaign I've
39:24
run on acquired brain injury over the years, partly because
39:27
of people playing rugby in South Wales and the concussions that
39:31
they suffered at the time have led to early onset dementia and
39:36
cognitive problems and depression and anxiety and all
39:39
sorts of things. I'm proud of the fact that I was
39:42
the minister that took forward the abolition of trust
39:44
ammunitions. I'm proud of what we've the deal
39:47
we've just done for musicians from with the record labels.
39:51
So yes, there's there's stuff, but it's all for me.
39:54
It's about getting things done. It really is about getting
39:57
things done. It's great when we win elections
40:00
because then we can get things done.
40:01
When you're in opposition, all you can do is throw bridges,
40:03
throw bridges, throw snowballs at people standing on the
40:06
bridge. I mean, you talk about crying
40:07
with Frank Dobson losing the 92 election.
40:11
I was Frank Dobson's election agent in 19 Two and mostly
40:15
working actually on Glenda Jackson's campaign next door.
40:17
And that led to a whole load of other stories.
40:19
But, and yes, Frank was the shadow energy secretary, so he
40:24
would have been the Secretary of State for energy, I guess.
40:27
And we would probably have introduced the miners
40:29
compensation scheme in 1992 if we'd won.
40:33
And I was driving him around the day after the election with a,
40:38
you know, megaphone saying thank you for voting Labour.
40:42
And then we had to stop. And the both the two of us sat
40:45
crying for a good 15 or 20 minutes until a traffic warden
40:51
tapped on the car and said, you're in a double yellow line.
40:55
And I think that that instilled in me a sense that you had to
41:00
take the nation with you. You couldn't just presume that
41:03
you were going to win because the the other side were rubbish.
41:07
But I mean, in terms of, you know, the things that make you
41:10
cry with rage now, I mean, you know, the accomplishments you've
41:14
mentioned, I don't want to denigrate them in any way, but
41:16
they are not the central causes of either the Labour Party or
41:21
the OR the government, the old government, you know, the last
41:24
Labour government or this government.
41:25
I mean, you know, is, is the truth that, you know, being in
41:31
politics is a bit disappointing. No, completely not and.
41:37
You know that you don't change the world as you would like.
41:39
To oh, no, because you changed the world person by person, step
41:42
by step and, and, and lot lots of little things.
41:45
I mean, sometimes I get asked what is it similar being an, a
41:51
constituency MP to being a, a priest?
41:53
It's identical, absolutely identical.
41:56
I remember, you know, when I, when I was a priest, my first
42:00
visit to an elderly lady, the lady died with my hat and I was
42:03
holding her hand as she died. I was giving her communion a few
42:08
weeks ago, somebody came to my constituency surgery and he'd
42:10
made a terrible decision 14 years ago and everything else
42:15
following on had just been a series of places where there
42:18
wasn't a good decision available to him anymore.
42:21
And we've managed to sort it out for him.
42:23
I mean, that is just, that is just such a phenomenal privilege
42:27
to be able to be alongside somebody in that way as an MP.
42:30
And I, and it's the bit that we have uniquely in our system that
42:36
lots of other systems don't have.
42:38
I mean, you know, if I speak to a Spanish MP or a French MP,
42:41
they just don't have that part of their equation.
42:44
And I I adore that part of it. So when, when you hear the sort
42:47
of the, the rage of the electorate now you know that
42:50
sense well, you know you've got into power and you're making,
42:52
making a mess of it and you know you're not doing anything fast
42:55
enough and you're not changing Britain the way you promised you
42:57
would. I mean, do you understand that?
43:01
Do you feel as well? I, I feel all the impatience.
43:04
I mean, I'm a very impatient person.
43:07
You could argue many times that's been my undoing.
43:10
I, I've run at a gate far too fast and, and I feel all that
43:14
impatience myself. I want to get things done this
43:16
afternoon, not wait until next week.
43:19
And sometimes when you've got to wait for the grid to say yes,
43:22
you can announce this, you go. I mean, isn't it very, I mean,
43:24
you know, you're a minister, you're part of the, you're in
43:26
the team that you wanted to be in the team.
43:29
And that with that comes the responsibility of not
43:31
criticizing it, taking ministerial responsibility.
43:35
Isn't that really frustrating as well?
43:37
I mean, you know, but you can't shout about the thing that's
43:40
making you angry. Well, you can't shout publicly,
43:42
but you could. But but you also have the
43:43
privilege of being behind the scenes and being able to say,
43:45
right, what is the best version of what we can sort out here?
43:50
And, and I'm very proud. I, I, I am absolutely adoring
43:56
the work that I'm able to do at the moment, whether it's, you
43:59
know, highly technical stuff that I'm doing around telecoms
44:02
or space or whatever, or data for that matter.
44:06
Or it's, you know, trying to sort out British artists, being
44:10
able to tour around Europe and getting creative education for
44:12
every child in every school in the country, all that kind of
44:14
stuff. I mean, it is my passion and I'm
44:17
very excited about it and I feel free to be able to push the
44:21
boundaries of what is achievable.
44:23
But on the bigger picture, what do you say to people when they
44:25
confront you with their disappointment?
44:27
Well, AI understand the the frustration and the impatience I
44:33
I equally get frustrated when people want us to have transfer
44:36
transformed the world in 50 minutes when you know it takes
44:42
it takes a long time to run a country down and it takes a long
44:47
time to get it back on its feet. But it's.
44:50
Difficult, isn't it? Because people look at America
44:51
now and they go, well, look at Donald Trump.
44:53
He's only been in power a few months and he seems to be
44:54
changing things. Why?
44:56
Why? Why don't you change things?
44:59
Not in the same way perhaps, but well, a, because I don't think
45:02
you would want to change them in the same way and take time.
45:04
Well, and. Secondly, we don't have a
45:05
presidential system and I and I guess there are some people who
45:08
would want us to have a presidential system.
45:09
I would wholeheartedly disagree. But you've got a massive
45:12
majority, so you can do whatever you want.
45:14
Well, no, you can't. And, and, and everything else
45:17
I've written about in the past is, you know, is, is about, I, I
45:21
do believe in the parliamentary system.
45:23
I believe that you have to, not least because it means you have
45:26
to be a team player. I always thought that one of the
45:28
problems with with Boris was that Boris Johnson would be a
45:32
great person, maybe in a, in a system, in a presidential
45:35
system, but it just doesn't work in a parliamentary system.
45:38
And that's why I think you have to trust in making sure that the
45:42
team works more effectively as a unit rather than just as
45:46
individuals. I mean, you're a Welsh MP and
45:49
people are people are suggesting that reform will win in Wales.
45:54
Do you do you think that's likely?
45:56
I know I look like Mystic Meg, but I'm not Mystic Meg and I'm
46:00
really I I've always thought Harriet Harman taught me
46:04
something years ago which she she said when you're an MP you
46:07
are not a commentator, you're a player.
46:10
So. But you see the threat.
46:11
Of course I see the threat and, and I and and I see the
46:15
monstrous misinformation and, and, and I, I, you know, we've
46:19
seen it many times. It's easy to build a grievance,
46:23
always easy to build a grievance in politics, 10 times more
46:27
difficult to be able to sort out a solution.
46:30
I mean, I, I, I watched your interview the other day with
46:33
Andrew Jenkins and I just thought, yeah, OK, so you,
46:36
you've spotted the problem and you know how to wind up the
46:39
grievance, but not you. But you, you haven't got an
46:42
answer. You haven't got an answer to a
46:43
single one of the things that you think is a problem.
46:47
So look, I mean, I, I think we are there to do 2 things as a
46:51
government. The first is we are there to put
46:55
right the things that have been broken.
46:58
The classic incidents I think is a prison system in the UK.
47:01
We just haven't got enough prisons for the prisoners that
47:03
we want to put in prison. So we should sort that and, and,
47:06
and the, and the previous government knew that they were
47:08
given endless advice to that effect and did nothing about it.
47:12
So that's the kind of thing where we've just got to put
47:14
things right, we've got to mend them and that will take time.
47:17
And then the second thing is we've already, we've got to make
47:19
sure that everybody gets a decent chance in life.
47:21
And I know from my constituency it says this more loudly perhaps
47:25
than any other in the country, that lots of people don't get a
47:28
decent chance in life. It's.
47:30
That's easier said than done, isn't it?
47:31
Oh, completely. Of course, because your.
47:33
Career is very interesting because you know, you span that
47:36
period of that you talk about of great sort of hope in the 90's,
47:39
the beginning of New Labour, you know, the, the Tony Blair
47:42
government and you know, and then opposition and then this.
47:48
And a lot of people thought this would be the same.
47:50
You just rerun the same plays, not as New Labour in the late
47:54
90s, and it'll all be fine. And it's turned out not to be
47:57
the case. It's completely different and
47:58
I'll tell you from. What?
47:59
So how has politics changed over that 20 year period?
48:02
Well, social media has fundamentally changed
48:04
everything. So you don't have, you know, 3
48:08
News programs everyday telling, giving you a curated version of
48:12
what is, is today's news. You have millions of people,
48:18
some of them with good intent and some with not good intent,
48:23
stirring the pot, getting their version of out there and so on.
48:26
And, and some elements of that I absolutely adore, but some of it
48:30
is, we know, profoundly scurrilous and deliberately
48:34
manufactured for effect. So.
48:37
So that's a much more difficult place to navigate.
48:40
Do you think your generation has worked out how to do politics in
48:45
this world? Now of course we haven't, I
48:49
mean, I think it's really tough and, and boy, I mean, I look at
48:53
the new intake of MPs. I think they're phenomenal.
48:56
I, I have not seen such a good intake of MPs as there is, I'm
49:01
not, I'm talking dominantly about Labour because that's what
49:04
I know. But I look at people in other
49:06
parties as well and there's some phenomenal MPs there and it can
49:10
be a very frustrating process being a backbench MPI spent most
49:14
of my time as an MP. I've been a backbencher, I've
49:18
relished it and I've enjoyed it. In that quote that I put to you
49:22
before you said the The sense that something just isn't fair
49:25
drives me crazy. An inexplicable rage boils up
49:28
inside me. Sometimes it's a furious refusal
49:31
to accept that something is happening.
49:34
What is it that's got you boiling right now?
49:38
Ukraine, I feel so angry. I mean, obviously predominantly
49:47
with Putin. And I feel very proud actually
49:53
of the role that Keir Starmer and other Western leaders have
49:57
played in making sure that we step up to the mark to make sure
50:00
that Ukraine isn't just abandoned.
50:04
This was so not only predictable, but predicted.
50:09
And that that makes me so angry. And, and I was on the Foreign
50:12
Affairs Committee. We went not, we went to Kiev 2
50:18
weeks before the 2nd invasion and we were advised not to go to
50:24
the to to the Donbass region. We said, well, we're here, we're
50:27
going. And every step of the way they
50:30
kept on saying you mustn't, you mustn't, you mustn't, you
50:32
mustn't. It isn't safe and say, well,
50:33
we're going. We went to Abdiv Abdivgah right
50:37
on the border with what, what was then the division line with
50:41
Russians. And we could see Russian snipers
50:42
pointing at at ours and at Ukrainian forces.
50:47
And I mean, we just knew this was going to happen.
50:50
And I feel still so angry that Russia lied and lied and lied
50:55
and lied and David Cameron and William Hague and Boris Johnson
51:02
completely surrendered Crimea to Russia and we failed and I don't
51:07
want us to fail again. I.
51:10
Thought you were going to say Gaza actually.
51:12
It's interesting that you you reach for Ukraine first.
51:17
Well, of course, I mean the, how can you watch either the events,
51:24
you know, the of, of, of the attack, the Hamas attack on
51:28
Israel or what's happened in the last 18 months and not feel
51:33
absolute fury and want to do something.
51:36
And how can you not feel guilt about not being able to do more
51:41
and, and what would more look like and how could you make more
51:44
happen, Of course, all the time, every single day, every time you
51:48
watch the news. How can you not feel that?
51:54
I suppose that's why you carry on.
51:56
Yes, because some, I, I was asked the other day, well, you
52:01
know, what have you ever achieved?
52:02
And I, you know, sometimes I list the small things, but of
52:06
course I'm also part of a much bigger team.
52:09
And then I, you know, in my time as a politician, we've managed
52:13
to get a minimum wage in place, we've managed to put legislation
52:18
in place which enables women, more women to be able to come
52:21
forward around rape. We've changed the law in so many
52:26
ways that I think has improved society.
52:28
We've introduced an Equality Act, all of these things that I
52:31
passionately believe in. And I think we are making a
52:35
better world that there's a hymn I always used to laugh at.
52:40
Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that will surely
52:44
be when the earth should be filled with the glory of God and
52:46
the waters cover the sea. But it starts with that idea of,
52:50
of when on earth is everything going to change?
52:53
And, and I just, I just still hold on to that faith about
52:57
politics, which is nearer. Nearer draws the time, the time
53:00
that will surely be. Chris Bryant, Sir.
53:02
Chris, thank you very much indeed.
53:04
Always sounds like I'm a pantomime Dame.
53:09
Well, that's it for this episode of The Forecast.
53:11
Until next time, bye bye.