The older you get, the more you remember advice that you received in your youth and that you didn’t understand at the time. My parents developed a congregational tradition; the congregationalists believe that everyone has a hotline to the Almighty, you don’t need bishops to lead you. My mother had an interesting religious background: her father was an atheist, but when she was a little girl of eight she said to herself, “If there is no God, we are all born in an orphanage” and became a Christian.
When I was very young she said, “The stories in the Bible are about the conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached righteousness.” She was right: the kings are a threat, but the teachings of all the great religious leaders – Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Marx – are all the same: treat everyone fairly.
When I was eight years old, my father said to me, “Never ring a chimney sweep.” What he meant was, if someone plays dirty with you, don’t play dirty with them or you will get dirty too.
My father kept a timeline of how he spent each hour of each day, and I had one as a child. He believed that time is very valuable and that everyone is equal: nobody has more time and nobody has less.
He believed that we were also responsible for the way we spend money: I got a penny a week to exist, a penny a week to go to school, and it went up to three pence when I gave his secretary an account. I could never get permission to make a phone call. Father said, “Send me a postcard.” Once he was not feeling well and he sent the doctor a postcard. When the card arrived, my father was better and had to call the doctor and tell him not to come.
They were wonderful people, always very kind and always fighting injustice. We had great discussions at home and my political memories go back a long way. My father was brave, independent, and worked on what he believed in. My mother also stood up for what she believed in. She left the Church of England because she did not want to ordain women and became a Congregationalist and President of the Congregational Federation. I have to be the only man whose mother was a denominational leader.
Together, their very simple principles have had a huge impact on my life. People say that as a rite of passage one should rebel against one’s parents, but I never felt the need to.
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