An emotional Neil Kinnock wiped away tears as he praised Andy Burnham's drive to ensure everyone in Britain has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
The former Labour leader, who had a brief career teaching adults before going into politics, said he had seen firsthand nearly six decades ago how unlocking people’s capabilities could change lives.
In his first major speech as prime minister-in-waiting on Monday, Mr Burnham said he wanted to give people stability which would create “this ability to get on in life”, pledging to ensure that everyone had the chance to be “everything they can be. That’s what we will do”.
In an interview with The Independent, Lord Kinnock said Mr Burnham’s call was “not just a sentimental political appeal, it's the truth”.
“And the tragedy is, of course, so few people recognise their capabilities, largely because nobody's told them.”
Reflecting on his brief career teaching adults, mainly trade unionists, 56 years ago, he said: “I learned a hell of a lot more from them than they ever learned from me.
“But I know I changed lives by saying to men and women, ‘you don't know how bloody good you are’.
“And I’d tell them things they'd said or written that demonstrated a dimension that they haven't recognised, and certainly the school they went to, or the army they served in, or even the parents they, had never recognised.
“And the result was in three years, I sent 21 to university off the shop floor. And they all got better degrees than I had”.
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He said some of them were “spectacular”. “Just bloody geniuses waiting to be discovered. But they were all terrific,” he said.
During a speech in 1987, while he was leading the Labour Party, Lord Kinnock famously asked in a historic 1987 speech why he was the first Kinnock ‘in 1,000 generations’ to go to university,
He said: “Why am I the first Kinnock in 1,000 generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Was it because they were weak, those people who could work eight hours underground and come up and play football. Weak?”
The phrasing was later borrowed by Joe Biden, before he became the US President.
He similarly asked: “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”
“Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Was it that they didn’t work hard, my ancestors who worked in the coal mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?”
Lord Kinnock was speaking to The Independent as part of its Europe: The Way Back campaign, which is calling for the UK to rebuild its relationship with Europe.
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