Neil Kinnock

 

I first met Neil Kinnock in the early 1990s when, as European Commissioner,  he was a guest speaker at an Anglo-America Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting.  I can't recall the venue.  It may have been the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, or it may have been the American Club near Green Park.  It certainly retains an American flavour.

After lunch I was able to get a few minutes alone with Neil and we enjoyed a amusing postprandial conversation nicely fuelled by the excellent wine they had served and spiced by his discovery that, still a schoolboy in Wales in 1945, I had canvassed for his boyhood political idol Jim Griffiths, Labour MP for Llanelli for 35 years.  We ended the conversation in a spontaneous comradely hug, and the press cameras flashed.

I subsequently tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the picture that was taken.

A few years later, in 1995, I attended the International Cargo Container Conference and Exhibition in Prague. Neil Kinnock, now Transport Commissioner in the European Commission, was a keynote speaker at the conference and was also given a conducted tour around the exhibition.  I buttonholed him when we reached the  stand with which I was associated (a combined Sea Containers and Containerships Oy stand).  He did not remember me, until I mentioned our discussion some years earlier that involved Jim Griffiths,  Fenner Brockway (q.v.), Ammanford and the Independent Labour Party.

This time the cameras that clicked were held by my colleagues and I have several memorable pictures of that occasion.  Even I didn't have the audacity to suggest a "hug for the cameras".