38 YEARS IN SCOTLAND MAK
FROM PAGE 41 hung out together. It helped form my world view.”
It could have paved the way to privilege, a rise through social ranks, but he wasn’t tempted.
He said: “That was never what motivated me. I was never motivated by money.
“Even then, I had certain political awareness, a sense of what seemed unfair.”
After watching veteran Labour MP Tony Benn on TV, he bought the leftist grandee’s book, Arguments for Socialism, from the local Woolworths.
Years later, in 1988, when Leonard was working for the Mid Scotland and Fife MEP Alex Falconer, he drove Benn around Scotland on the campaign trail for his ill-fated Labour leadership campaign against Neil Kinnock. Benn didn’t disappoint. Leonard said: “He took me by surprise.
“There was this great guy, a font of wisdom with a whole life of political experience and he was asking me what I thought about things.
“He was very influential, he was charismatic, a fantastic orator and he could explain complex ideas in simple language.”
Eight years earlier, in 1980, Leonard took up the offer of a place at Stirling University largely because he wanted to venture, “a long way from home”.
His father lost his job the same year. Margaret Thatcher had swept into power in 1979 as a wrecking ball, and set about ploughing through the mining and steel industry, manufacturing, shipbuilding and engineering.
His father and wife Janet were forced to uproot Leonard’s sister and move 400 miles south to Suffolk for work, leaving behind another daughter and elderly parents.
Leonard said: “There was a feeling a lot was at stake at that time.
“For me, politics was no longer about theories or something I had read in a book by Tony Benn.
“My family was living the experience of the impact of Thatcherism. There was a lot of strife and emotional upheaval for families who went through that.
“It was a class issue. What she was doing was anti-working class, she was stripping the trade unions of power,