Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee
Toynbee in Westminster, December 2006
Born	Mary Louisa Toynbee (1946-12-27) 27 December 1946 Isle of Wight, England
Nationality	British
Education	St Anne's College, Oxford
Occupation	Journalist and writer
Notable credit(s)	Social Affairs editor: the BBC (1988–1995) Columnist: The Guardian (since 1998).
Spouse(s)	Peter Jenkins (1970–1992) David Walker
Children	3
Relatives	Arnold J. Toynbee (grandfather) Philip Toynbee (father)

Mary Louisa Toynbee, known as Polly Toynbee (/ˈtɔɪnbi/; born 27 December 1946), is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998.

She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 general election. She now broadly supports the Labour Party. During the 2010 general election she called for tactical voting to keep out the Conservatives with the hope that this would lead to a Lab-Lib coalition supporting proportional representation.

However, she was a strong critic of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition and urged a vote for Labour in 2015. Toynbee previously worked as social affairs editor for the BBC and also for The Independent newspaper. She is Vice President of the British Humanist Association, having previously served as its President between 2007 and 2012. She was also named 'Columnist of the Year' at the 2007 British Press Awards.

Background

Polly Toynbee was born at Yafford on the Isle of Wight, the second daughter of the literary critic Philip Toynbee (by his first wife Anne), granddaughter of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, and great-great niece of philanthropist and economic historian Arnold Toynbee, after whom Toynbee Hall in the East End of London is named. Her parents divorced when Toynbee was aged four and she moved to London with her mother.

After attending Badminton School, a girls' independent school in Bristol, followed by the Holland Park School, a state comprehensive school in London (she had failed the eleven plus examination) she passed one A-level. She won a scholarship to read history at St Anne's College, Oxford but dropped out of university after eighteen months. During her gap year, in 1966, she worked for Amnesty International in Rhodesia (which had just declared independence) until she was expelled by the government. She published her first novel, Leftovers, in 1966. Following her expulsion from Rhodesia, Toynbee revealed the existence of the "Harry" letters, which detailed the alleged funding of Amnesty International by the British government.

After 18 months at Oxford, she dropped out, finding work in a factory and a burger bar and hoping to write in her spare time. She later said "I had a loopy idea that I could work with my hands during the day and in the evening come home and write novels and poetry, and be Tolstoy... But I very quickly discovered why people who work in factories don't usually have the energy to write when they get home." She went into journalism, working on the diary at The Observer, and turned her eight months of experience in manual work (along with "undercover" stints as a nurse and an Army recruit) into the book A Working Life (1970).

Toynbee genealogy

The Toynbees have been prominent in British intellectual society for several generations (note that this diagram is not a comprehensive Toynbee family tree):

Career

Toynbee worked for many years at The Guardian before joining the BBC where she was social affairs editor (1988–1995). At The Independent, which she joined after leaving the BBC, she was a columnist and associate editor, working with then editor Andrew Marr. She later rejoined The Guardian. She has also written for The Observer and the Radio Times; at one time she edited the Washington Monthly USA.

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Polly Toynbee speaks at the October 2005 Labour Party conference

Following in the footsteps of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001), she published in 2003 Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain about an experimental period voluntarily living on the minimum wage, which was £4.10 per hour at the time. She worked as a hospital porter in a National Health Service hospital, a dinnerlady in a primary school, a nursery assistant, a call-centre employee, a cake factory worker and a care home assistant, during which time she contracted salmonella. The book is critical of conditions in low pay jobs in Britain. She also contributed an introduction to the UK edition of Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Currently Toynbee serves as President of the Social Policy Association. She is chair of the Brighton Festival and deputy treasurer of the Fabian Society.

Political history and opinions

Toynbee and her first husband Peter Jenkins (from 1970) were supporters of the Social Democratic Party breakaway from Labour in 1981, both signing the Limehouse Declaration. Toynbee stood for the party at the 1983 General Election in Lewisham East, garnering 9351 votes (22%), and finishing third. She was one of the very few SDP members who believed in unilateral nuclear disarmament, founding an unsuccessful group "Unilateralists for Social Democracy". She later refused to support the subsequent merger of the SDP with the Liberals (to form the Liberal Democrats), reacting instead by rejoining Labour when the rump SDP collapsed.

In a 2002 debate hosted by the Royal Society of Arts and Prospect, Toynbee argued that the West should pursue liberal internationalism by intervening through the United Nations to promote democracy around the world: "Spreading people's right to self-determination, and their right to think and vote for themselves, is a moral obligation...We should be intervening now in the Congo and Sudan".

Toynbee strongly supports state education, though she had two of her three children partly educated in the private sector, leading to accusations of hypocrisy. Although consistently critical of many of Tony Blair's New Labour reforms, she wrote in 2005 that his government "remains the best government of my political lifetime". During the 2005 General Election, with dissatisfaction high among traditional Labour voters, Toynbee wrote several times about the dangers of protest voting, "Giving Blair a bloody nose". She urged Guardian readers to vote with a clothes peg over their nose if they had to, to make sure Michael Howard would not win from a split vote. "Voters think they can take a free hit at Blair while assuming Labour will win anyway. But Labour won't win if people won't vote for it".

Toynbee speaking to Policy Exchange in 2013

In December 2006, Greg Clark (a former SDP member, later to be a Conservative Minister) claimed Toynbee should be an influence on the modern Conservative Party, causing a press furore. Reacting to this, Conservative leader David Cameron said he was impressed by one metaphor in her writings – of society being a caravan crossing a desert, where the people at the back can fall so far behind they are no longer part of the tribe. He added, "I will not be introducing Polly Toynbee's policies". Toynbee expressed some discomfort with this embrace, adding, "I don't suppose the icebergs had much choice about being hugged by Cameron either." In response to the episode, Boris Johnson, at the time a Conservative MP and journalist who had been severely criticised by Toynbee, rejected any association with Toynbee's views, writing that 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".

Having advocated Brown to succeed Blair as Prime Minister, she continued to endorse him in the early part of his premiership. By spring 2009 she had become sharply critical of Brown, arguing that he had failed to introduce the social-democratic policies he promised, and was very poor at presentation too. She subsequently called for his departure, voluntary or otherwise. In the European Elections of June 2009 she advocated a vote for the Liberal Democrats. During the 2010 general election she advocated a tactical vote for whichever candidate was best able to keep the Conservatives out of power.

In October 2010 Toynbee was criticised for an article in The Guardian in which she said the government's benefits changes would drive many poor people out of London and could be seen as a "final solution" for their situation. Some people interpreted this as a reference to the Nazis, which Toynbee said was not her intention. A Press Complaints Commission report in the matter ruled the comments were "insensitive", but did not breach any rules as the organisation's remit does not cover matters of taste and offence. She later apologised for using the term.

Toynbee has been described as "the queen of leftist journalists", and in 2008 topped a poll of 100 "opinion makers", carried out by Editorial Intelligence. She was also named the most influential columnist in the UK. With her current partner, former Social Affairs editor of The Guardian David Walker (Peter Jenkins died in 1992), Toynbee co-authored two books reviewing the successes and failures of New Labour in power. In Unjust Rewards (2008) they argued that "excess at the top hurts others".

Toynbee has criticised current Opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, accusing his supporters of being too optimistic and lacking any "rallying cry". She has further stated that she believes Corbyn to be unelectable as Prime Minister. However, Toynbee has opposed a "social democratic breakaway" from Corbyn's party.

Views on religion

An atheist, Toynbee is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland, and was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007. Since 2012 she has been the BHA's Vice President. She claimed that she is simply a consistent atheist, and is just as critical of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. She wrote: "The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies." In 1997 she declared "I am an Islamophobe and proud of it". In 2005 she opposed the Bill to outlaw incitement to religious hatred: "Race is something people cannot choose and it defines nothing about them. But beliefs are what people choose to identify with...The two cannot be blurred into one – which is why the word Islamophobia is a nonsense".

In 2003 upon the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's papacy, she wrote that he "is a hate-figure and with good reason...No one can compute how many people have died of Aids as a result of Wojtyla's power, how many woman have died in childbirth needlessly, how many children starved in families too large and poor to feed them. But it is reasonable to suppose these silent, unseen, uncounted deaths at his hand would match that of any self-respecting tyrant or dictator".

Toynbee had agreed to debate with philosopher William Lane Craig during his UK October visit, but subsequently pulled out, saying "I hadn't realised the nature of Mr Lane Craig's debating style, and having now looked at his previous performances, this is not my kind of forum."

Toynbee has mixed feelings about the Church of England; she opposed both religious and secular dogmatic beliefs. In April 2014 she wrote:

The C of E is a confusing creature. Even while it tussles internally between conservative and liberal wings on gay marriage or female bishops, polls of its members show it's no longer the Conservative party at prayer: more vote Lib Dem and Labour. Look at the 40 bishops' raspberry of an Easter message to Cameron, with their strong rebuke against the "national crisis" of hunger so much worsened by his welfare policies. They know because their churches house the food banks used by almost a million people. (...) Like all humanity, the religious are both good and bad. The C of E is good on food banks, bad on sex and death. Faith makes people no more virtuous, but nor do rationalists claim any moral superiority. Pogroms, inquisitions, jihadist terror and religious massacres can be matched death for death with the secular horrors of Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin. The danger is where absolute belief in universal truths, religious or secular, permits no doubt.

Honours

Toynbee was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Essex in 1999 and by London South Bank University in 2002. In 2005, she was made an Honorary Doctor of The Open University for "her notable contribution to the educational and cultural well-being of society". The University of Leeds awarded her third Honorary Doctorate in 2008.

She won the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1998 (for journalism published by The Independent), and in 2007 was named 'Columnist of the Year' at the British Press Awards.

Personal life

Toynbee married The Guardian's political columnist Peter Jenkins in 1970 having met him at trade union conference; they had three children. Jenkins died from a lung disease in 1992.

Toynbee is a member of the Arts Emergency Service.

Select bibliography

• Leftovers, a novel (1966) ISBN 0-586-02643-6
• A Working Life (1971) ISBN 0-340-14760-1
• Hospital (1977) ISBN 0-09-131390-2
• Way We Live Now (1981) ISBN 0-413-49090-4
• Lost Children: Story of Adopted Children Searching for Their Mothers (1985) ISBN 0-09-160440-0
• Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain (2003) ISBN 0-7475-6415-9
• Better or Worse?: Has Labour Delivered? (2005) ISBN 0-7475-7982-2
• Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today (with David Walker, 2008) ISBN 978-1-84708-093-6
• Cameron's Coup (with David Walker, 2015)

External links

• Guardian columns by Polly Toynbee
• Polly Toynbee on Twitter
• Polly Toynbee on Journalisted
• Interview with Polly Toynbee at the Wayback Machine (archived September 25, 2006) focussing on religion with Third Way magazine, 22 June 1998
• Political Journalist of the Year 2003 citation at the Wayback Machine (archived January 18, 2008)
• Journalisted – Articles by Polly Toynbee
• RSA Vision webcast – Polly Toynbee elaborates on the findings of her new book Unjust Rewards: Exposing the Greed and Inequality in Britain Today 18 September 2008