Saturday, 7 December 2013
Nelson Mandela
Reports of Nelson Mandela's ailing health over recent months did nothing to curtail the shocked sadness that I think all of us experienced at the news of his passing away on Thursday night. Not only was he the greatest political leader of our time, he set a mark of how to be the finest human being - even in the most adverse and cruellest of circumstances.
I was privileged to hear him speak in 2000 at the Labour Party Conference. He spoke briefly to a small party of us and delivered this uplifting and moving speech at the conference. As with everything else he said and did, the lessons of that speech are as important now as they were then.
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I was in the hall for that speech too. It was overshadowed a year later of course by the world being turned upside down by the 9/11 attacks. That what he said stood the test not only of time but of the re-ordering of the world on such a catastrophic scale speaks for itself.
As does the choice of speaker, in the same year, for the Conservative party conference. That speaker was Jim Davidson.
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