Monday, September 19, 2011

At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange

The publishers have allowed me to reproduce the author's Introduction to this book which is generating so much interest and which is in bookstores now.
Introduction
 This is a book about the politics of the idiosyncratic and unsettling eighties and the influence of personality and personal relationships on politics. The book describes political events between 1982, when I went to work for the parliamentary Labour Party, and 1989, when I left my job as speechwriter in the Prime Minister’s Office.
It is not hard to see why the fourth Labour government, which took power with such high hopes in 1984 and had many able, talented and well-meaning individuals in its ranks, should have ended despised and discredited in 1990. Public disillusionment with the government grew with the acrimony and uncertainty of its second term in office. That is about as far as partisans could agree. Everything else — why and how Labour took a radical turn to the right in government, why it did so well in its first term and so badly in its second, why the champions of the revolution turned on each other and what exactly they were fighting about — is in dispute. This is my view of what happened.
It is also an account of my relationship with David Lange, or as much of it as is relevant to the politics of the day. My affair with David may be central to my personal history but it played a small part in the story of the fourth Labour government. For reasons described in the book, it plays a larger part in its legends.
I did not keep a diary in the eighties, but I have done my best to be accurate. I have used written sources, the public record and the recollections of others to reinforce my memory. Some spoken words from the past have stuck in my mind, and many impressions have lasted. The political battles described in the book still resonate, and this is not an objective account of them, but distance has given perspective to events that seemed like an unending series of accidents and incidents at the time.
I am grateful to Stephen Mills, who gave me access to his archive of political records of the 1980s and to many people who shared their memories of David and the events described in this book.

© 2011 Margaret Pope
At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange - $39.99

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