Polly Toynbee



Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998.

Toynbee previously worked as social affairs editor for the BBC (1988–1995) and also for The Independent newspaper. Before joining the BBC, she had written for The Observer and The Guardian. She is vice-president of Humanists UK, having previously served as its president between 2007 and 2012. She was also named Columnist of the Year at the 2007 British Press Awards. She became a patron of right to die organization My Death, My Decision in 2021. She was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 general election. She now broadly supports the Labour Party.

1978
Inside one cell a big, red haired girl sat on her bed, the only furniture, and the officer said she was there for her own protection. She can hardly have been twenty, but her arms, legs and face were covered in old scars. New stitches stood out on the pale flesh from a long cut across her arm. She cut herself often. She was also agoraphobic and didn't want to leave the cell. "I'm glad you've come to talk to me," she said warmly as I sat down beside her. She sounded like a young child. "No one's been to talk to me all day. I don't want to be free but I'd like to be in mental hospital, where I was before. But they sent me out, so I stole a social security cheque and went straight to the police, and then I got put here." Her mother had been in the same mental hospital. Her father and two uncles had killed themselves, and she had slashed herself countless times. Her father had assaulted her when she was six and when she was sixteen. She, too, though visited by a doctor every day, as are all Bleak inmates, said she was receiving no psychiatric treatment, and no drugs.
 * [At HMP Styal, a women's prison in Cheshire, near Manchester] Since mental hospitals began to shed their patients into what is euphemistically called the community, the prison ranks have swelled to accommodate them.
 * The punishment block is aptly named Bleak House, and known just as Bleak. Several of the solitary cells inside this separate compound, hidden behind the coal sheds, were opened for me to inspect the inmates, a procedure that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. ...
 * The Guardian (29 May 1978), p. 9

He was receiving no treatment. The centre called the assistant governor and asked for an urgent inquiry. He acted at once. The man was found to be in appalling state. He was rushed to the medical wing where he was diagnosed as having Huntington's Chorea, an hereditary disease which strikes suddenly in middle age, bringing insanity followed by death. The whole family had been watching, visit by visit, as their father went mad before their eyes. No doubt the prison officers did not like the implied criticism of their negligence. There were many other such incidents, though the centre was as careful as possible not to make the officers feel they were being criticised.
 * [At HMP Pentonville where the visitors centre was closing] There was, for example, the case of a youngish woman with a large family who visited her husband every fortnight. Each time they came they returned to the centre in a more miserable state. One day they were in tears and the youngest child was sick. The woman said her husband was clearly ill. He had been wild and violent. Each visit he seemed to be getting worse.
 * The Guardian (10 July 1978), p. 11

He was a big shambling clumsy looking young man. When asked, he said he had already been guaranteed an unconditional place at his father's hospital "Well, they could hardly turn you down. Could they?" said the Dean drily. ... Picking up the report, which indicated laziness... [d]id he really want to be a doctor? "Yes, I'm dead serious." What sort of doctpr? "A country GP working on my own. I couldn't stick the routine of hospital life" ... [After the candidate left, the Dean and Consultant surgeon conducting the interviews discussed him] "What do you think?" the Dean asked the surgeon. "I knew his father, and he was just the same, but he's a very good doctor now." The surgeon laughed. "I would say that under no circumstances whatever would I admit him if it wasn't that you knew his father and you say he was the same." The Dean said, "Well, I'm happy to have him." I was surprised at the decision. He spoke enthusiastically about the role of doctor as counsellor, pointing out that recent research indicated that GPs had to deal with people's psychological ailments as much as their physical wellbeing. ... Analysis of the school's drop-outs showed that the desire to do social work and a wish to bring about change in society to help the roots of patients problems was one of the main reasons for students failing to stay the course. This boy was turned down outright.
 * He came from a public school, was the son of an old student of the dean ... [and] the only one with a distinctly sour school report.
 * The last candidate of the day was also the son of of a doctor. The Dean knew his father too. "His father is a bright chap, but completely incomprehensible," he said. The boy was intense and serious but with a speech impediment. He spoke a great deal about the need for doctors to "Co-communicate" with their patients, which afterwards made the Dean smile.
 * The Guardian (18 December 1978), p. 13
 * Observing interviews conducted for admission to a London teaching hospital.

1980–1987
Catholic West Belfast is a wedge-shaped slice of the city, and the Divis Complex is perched on the tip of the triangle, its 13 battered blocks nudging up against the check points of the city centre. Built only ten years ago, the flats have degenerated into a festering heap, crushed by the weight of their human density ... The troubles have contributed to the plight of the estate, but wherever it had been thrown up, it would have sunk under its own architectural and design faults, the cheapness of the materials used, the lack of repairs and amenities. ... The patches of ground between the flats are muddy heaps, scattered withy rubbish, with the stumps of old playground furnishings, bare ends of wires protruding where lamp posts once stood, and large rat holes everywhere. Rats have taken a grip on the place according to a recent estimate, the rat population was about 17,000 and out of control. ... There are no lights in the complex. Vandals knocked some out, and soldiers smashed the rest with their rifle butts, needing the cover of darkness for their patrols. The army has an observation tower at the top of the tower block, and patrols, running and covering one another chase up and down the balconies. One lunchtime when I was there, the soldiers had been into the estate five times that day. They had been knocking on doors and questioning people. Sometimes at night they knock front doors down. The flats stand on the front line next to the Shankill Protestant area, and there have been countless murders. ... The stairways are pitch dark even in the daytime — so dark that everyone counts the stairs as they go, remembering which flights have seven and which have ten steps. Some stairs have large chunks of concrete missing, so a stranger might well break a leg. ... It all takes its toll. With so many children in such a place, I didn't see much kindness. Brutalisation is inevitable. A mother wanted to show me her crippled child couldn't walk. "Come on Patrick show the lady how you move about," she urged him, but he shook his head. "Come on," she shouted, cuffing him.
 * If the Divis Complex in Belfast isn't the vilest housing estate in Britain, I am willing to accept nominations for the award.
 * "The sound of shots is still common, but the children don't turn a hair. They're used to it." The Guardian (18 February 1980), p. 8
 * Yet again we are to be treated to the disgusting spectacle of the virtually all-male House of Commons pontificating sanctimoniously on when and how women must or must not give birth to children. The greatest number of abortions happen because men abandon women at pregnancy, so the sight of a large collection of men deciding when and how women should have babies is especially unedifying.
 * The greatest motor behind the anti-abortion campaign has always come from the Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant churches and within all churches there has always been the strongest streak of misogyny. Telling infertile women that they should not benefit from test tube bay techniques or telling pregnant women they must give birth springs from a fount of woman hating passion that begins with the first chapter of Genesis and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
 * "With men and God on his side" The Guardian (1 October 1987)
 * On David Alton's Private Member's Bill in the House of Commons to reduce the time limit beyond which an abortion could not be performed. At the 1987 general election the previous June, 41 female MPs (6.3% of the 650 total) were returned to the otherwise "virtually all-male House of Commons".

2000–2020

 * Sometimes it seems as if a tidal wave of the worst Western culture is creeping across the globe like a giant strawberry milkshake. How it oozes over the planet, sweet, sickly, homogenous, full of 'E' numbers, stabilisers and monosodium glutamate, tasting the same from Samoa to Siberia to Somalia. A traveller across the desert wastes of the Sahara arrives at last at Timbuktu, where the first denizen he meets is wearing a Texaco baseball cap. Pilgrims to the Himalayas in search of the ultimate wilderness in the furthest kingdom find Everest strewn with rubbish, tins, plastic bags, Coca-Cola bottles and all the remnants of the modern global picnicker. Explorers of the Arctic complain that empty plastic bottles of washing-up liquid are embedded in the ice. Global culture and its detritus wash up everywhere, nothing sacred, nothing wild, nothing authentic, original or primitive any more. These modern travellers' tales tell of cultural vandalism, Western Goths contaminating ancient civilisations and traditions untouched for centuries. If the West were to set out on a mission of global imperialism deliberately planned we would surely choose better cultural ambassadors. It is not pages from Shakespeare or scores of Mozart that litter steppe and savannah but some marketing man's logo from last year's useless, meretricious product, or a snatch of that maddening theme tune from Titanic. Was ever an empire so monstrously self-assured and ambitious? Western cultural imperialism reaches right into the hearts and souls, the sexual behaviour, the spirit, religion, politics and the nationhood of the entire world. It happens haphazardly with no master plan or empire-building blueprint, but with a vague and casual insouciance that drives its detractors to despair. So when we consider the globalisation of culture most of us bring to the subject a jumble of deep-seated alarms - moral, intellectual, political, spiritual, artistic and nationalistic, melting into a great pot of 'globalisation panic'. It causes deep pessimism about the cultural future of a world turning homogeneously horrible.
 * "The West really is the best Global 'McCulture' is a tragedy... but it's a price worth paying for spreading the gospel of human rights" The Observer (5 March 2000)
 * Extract from essay in Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens (eds.) On the Edge, Living with Global Capitalism, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000


 * We might let Auberon Waugh rest in peace were it not for the mighty damage his clan has done to British political life, journalism and discourse in the postwar years. They have perpetuated the myth of the superior cultured English gent as an archetype. Although Waugh's loathing of American culture made him uniquely amongst this bunch a pro-European, (he loved to be a "maverick"), this coterie has lead the spirit of anti-Europeanism that pervades Tory party and country. Christopher Booker, Richard Ingrams and the rest posit a brave little England of crusty country-living upper-class eccentrics versus the dread (another of their words) bureaucracy of Brussels. It's the old world charm of Whisky Galore mischief-making and John Buchan plucky patriots against the humourless foreign swine. They have contributed to a nation afraid of change or modernity, peddling false, sentimental tradition and an upper-class yesterday unavailable to virtually everyone else.
 * "Ghastly man", The Guardian (19 January 2001)


 * Yet, as ever, he will sound considerably tougher on crime than on its causes because that is where his true feelings lie. The toughness comes easy but the underlying social justice theme comes but once a year at party conference.
 * The underlying reason for remorseless social disadvantage remains a silent subject in Blair politics.
 * "Breathless charioteer", The Guardian (2 September 2005)


 * Research published this month into OECD countries shows the poor gamble away a larger proportion of their income than the better off. Inevitably the temptations are greater when a £4,000 jackpot feels life-changing to someone on the minimum wage. So countries with more poor people - like the UK - are likely to gamble more. Britain is already the fifth highest gambler among developed nations.
 * High rolling countries run other risks when the exchequer itself gets addicted to the revenues. The Australian government now draws over 10% of its income from gambling: however much destruction it causes to families, the government would fear action that cut gambling habits. The UK Treasury gets only £1.4bn from gambling: on household losses of £9.7bn, that sounds as if the industry is escaping its fair UK dues.
 * No-one is suggesting banning gambling or casinos, any more than I would ban pornography, or drugs or all manner of things that might do people harm. But there is an important social difference between freedom to do what adults please if they deliberately seek out those things from regulated places - and aggressively thrusting them at everyone in everyday life.
 * "One last chance to resist the temptations of gambling", The Guardian (26 February 2008)


 * The Labour question is always the same – how far can you go and still bring enough voters with you? As Labour’s divide deepens, those of us not supporting Corbyn have been assailed as "neoliberal", "siding with the elite", "betraying the poor", "hypocrite" and worse. Like many Labour people, free to dream I’d go further than Corbyn: I’d go for a windfall wealth tax to pay off the deficit, make the Queen be Elizabeth the Last, abolish faith schools, private schools and inheritance, tax millionaires at 70%: add your wishlist here. I don’t know how far you can go – but you have to win power to get anywhere at all. Once in power, with the levers of persuasion, you can take people further than you dare tread in opposition.
 * "Free to dream, I'd be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can't gamble the future on him" The Guardian (4 August 2015).


 * Dominic Cummings was brought in by Johnson to swing a wrecking ball at Whitehall, local councils, the BBC and anything that smelled of good government. No surprise that those who don't believe in the state have made the worst possible fist of running it in a crisis. Brexit embodied their mindset: break away, break things and disrupt.
 * "Boris Johnson is the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time", The Guardian (20 April 2020)
 * Written in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.

2021–present

 * [A reopening of a water fountain in London, Wimbledon] I was there because the fountain was erected in 1868 in memory of my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Toynbee, otologist and ear-syringer to Queen Victoria: he died young in his laboratory experimenting on himself with chloroform for tinnitus. He was a radical local campaigner who fought to save Wimbledon Common from the rapacious Earl Spencer's attempt to privatise and enclose it. He set up the Wimbledon Village Club, a working men's institute for edification, entertainment, refreshments and a library, in much community use now. Family history records that his rigorous selflessness included dragging his nine children across Wimbledon Common on Christmas Day to make them donate their Christmas dinner to a Travellers' encampment. The plaque on the fountain says that working men of Wimbledon and those "interested in the public good" paid for this memorial.
 * "How a monument to my great-great-grandfather could help tackle the scourge of plastic pollution" The Guardian (7 March 2023)


 * The trouble with the monarchy is not that it is too powerful but that it is utterly useless. So much is spent on ceremonial trappings to disguise its inner nothingness.
 * Here comes the coronation in a few weeks, not much changed since I was waving at the last one, pleading in vain for a Dinky Toy gold coach.
 * "For something so hollow, the royal family is astonishingly expensive" The Guardian (5 April 2023)

Afterwards, as we both contemplated this scene, looking at his sister and at the vision of our future stretching out ahead of us, he broke off with me. [Toynbee had a then illegal abortion.]
 * [Remembering life events in 1964 or 1965] But as he was about to go to Oxford, I was appalled to find I was pregnant and even more appalled at his anti-abortion mother pressing us to marry. She suggested we would live in an Oxford flat, where I would bring up the baby while he studied: the end of my own future worried her not at all. We paid a visit to his newly married sister, who was living in Oxford’s Summertown, up the road from my great-aunts. I was pleased to see her, this lively, funny and magnetic character. But she was living, as far as I could see, the life their mother expected me to live, married and cooped up in an Oxford flat with a baby. Though she was herself a student, wifedom and life with a baby looked to me like a brutal curtailment of studenthood, locked in at home. There was her baby, Alexander, a few months old, lying naked on a bath mat, kicking his feet in the air, round, pink and fat, with a remarkable shock of electrically bright blond hair. As I gazed at him, I didn't find that baby at all appealing, too pink and too noisy. I shuddered at the prospect of this motherly existence, threatening an end to my life before it had even begun.
 * That baby on the bath mat, who so decisively put me off the idea of teen motherhood, grew up to be the most disgraced prime minister under his ludicrously changed name of Boris: he looks much the same.
 * As for Boris Johnson, I look back with a morbid incredulity at what that baby grew up to be. It’s a not particularly good joke to surprise people with the fact that I am one of the many women to have seen him naked.
 * From an edited extract of An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals (Atlantic Books, 2023), as reproduced in "Polly Toynbee: what my privileged start in life taught me about the British class system" The Guardian (20 May 2023)
 * Edmund Fawcett was the brother of Charlotte Johnson Wahl. Frances Beatrice Fawcett (née Lowe, 1913–2001) was their mother.

The great scandal is the spiralling number of tenants evicted on "no-fault" section 21 orders: these allow a landlord to turn someone out even if they have always paid their rent on time, however many years they have been there, however well-behaved they have been.
 * This is where the housing pressure-cooker explodes. This is Manchester's civil court, like others all across England, where people are made homeless, hundreds every day. Those unable to pay rocketing mortgages have houses repossessed here. Tenants unable to cope with stagnant incomes lose their homes here when budgets no longer cover rising rents. From here, court bailiffs are sent to remove them.
 * "I spent a day in a court where 'no-fault' evictions reach 10 an hour. Whose fault is this, Rishi Sunak?", The Guardian (15 December 2023)


 * By instinct, I like the French revolutionary tradition commanding absolute secularism in schools and state institutions. But French secularism tends to cause less social harmony, not more, used as an easy pretext for far-right anti-Muslim attacks. Humanists defend people's right to private beliefs and religious practices, as long as they impose on no one else.
 * "Banning prayer rituals in school? Just get religion out of education completely", The Guardian (23 January 2024)


 * [On the Bruges Group, informally a thinktank for the Conservatives] They spread Europhobia through their party until all candidates had to test positive for Brexit.
 * "I went to see how the Tories are handling defeat – and found Faragism and a total lack of reflection", The Guardian (16 July 2024)

About Toynbee

 * In alphabetical order by author or publication.


 * Her class identity has clearly caused her much confusion and soul-searching. She is particularly acute on the uncomfortable space that the radical middle and upper-middle classes have always occupied in our culture. The charge of hypocrisy is so easily made against affluent campaigners and reformers who must suffer "the cognitive dissonance of failing to live up to the beliefs we profess." It’s a fate, Toynbee notes with irritation, that no smug wealthy Conservative ever has to endure.
 * Melissa Benn "An Uneasy Inheritance — Polly Toynbee’s memoir of her family and other radicals" Financial Times (25 May 2023)
 * From a review of An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals (Atlantic Books, 2023)


 * It is not my practice to engage in local political activity on the grounds that I have quite enough of that sort of thing without doing it in the evenings or at weekends. My wife, Ms Polly Toynbee, who is a member of the SDP's National Steering Committee, intends to put up for the Lambeth Borough Council. That is her affair and I shall go canvassing on her behalf if weather permits. I expect, in the fulness of time, to become the Denis Thatcher of the SDP.
 * Peter Jenkins "Fleet Street's Political Map Redrawn", The Guardian (3 March 1982), p. 13


 * In so far as New Labour has a fairy godmother, Polly is the girl. She incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair's Britain.
 * Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and 'elf 'n' safety fascism. In an ideal Polly Toynbee world, private sector broadcasting would be banned, Rupert Murdoch would be nationalised, and the BBC would hire thousands more taxpayer-funded social affairs correspondents to psalm the benefits of social democracy.
 * All I can say is that when I had come out of my faint, and read what Greg was saying, I saw, naturally, that he was absolutely right. In spite of all she gets wrong, there are things that Polly says that are serious and true, and that any Conservative government should be saying.
 * Boris Johnson "Polly Toynbee the Tory guru: that's barking. Or maybe not" The Telegraph (23 November 2006), p. 26
 * Conservative MP Greg Clark, whom Johnson describes as a friend, had suggested in a strategy paper that Toynbee was a more appropriate commentator for the party's policies on poverty than Winston Churchill.

It's no wonder she's so upset at being called middle class. It's quite wrong. Mary Louisa Toynbee (as she was born) is the [great] great granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle. Her [great grand] uncle was the philanthropist Arnold Toynbee. She comes from a very grand family.
 * In Tuesday's Guardian, the doyenne of the liberal-Left establishment, Polly Toynbee, unburdened herself of the anger she feels when she is attacked for being middle class: "Right-wingers have long used class against any middle-class Leftist, a bullying that sidesteps the real political argument."
 * Stephen Pollard "The class war is over - do tell Labour" The Daily Telegraph (11 September 2008) p. 23