Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee
Born	Mary Louisa Toynbee 27 December 1946 (1946-12-27) Isle of Wight, England
Occupation	Journalist and writer
Spouse(s)	Peter Jenkins (1970-1992) David Walker
Children	3
Notable relatives	Arnold J. Toynbee (grandfather) Philip Toynbee (father),
Ethnicity	English
Religious belief(s)	None (atheist)
Notable credit(s)	Social Affairs editor: the BBC (1988–1995) Columnist: The Guardian

Polly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee, 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 broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing. During the 2010 general election she urged people to support Labour, but called for tactical voting in favour of the Liberal Democrats in constituencies that were unlikely to turn to Labour. This was to be done with a view to bring about a Lab-Lib coalition in support of proportional representation. She was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007. In 2007 she was named 'Columnist of the Year' at the British Press Awards.

Background

Polly Toynbee was born 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 won a scholarship to read history at St Anne's College, Oxford, despite gaining only one A-level. During her gap year she worked for Amnesty International in pre-independence Rhodesia, before being expelled by the government, and she published a first novel, Leftovers, in 1966.

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):

Joseph Toynbee Pioneering otolaryngologist

Harriet Holmes

Arnold Toynbee Economic historian

Harry Valpy Toynbee

Gilbert Murray Classicist and public intellectual

Lady Mary Howard

Arnold J. Toynbee Universal historian

Rosalind Murray 1890-1967

Antony Harry Toynbee 1914-39

Philip Toynbee Writer and journalist

Anne Powell

Lawrence Toynbee b. 1922

Josephine Toynbee

Polly Toynbee Journalist

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.

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 later refused to support the subsequent merger of the SDP with the Liberals (to form the Liberal Democrats), reacting instead by moving back towards Labour when the rump SDP collapsed.

Toynbee strongly supports state education, though partly educated two of her three children privately, leading to accusations of hypocrisy. Although she has been consistently critical of many of Tony Blair's New Labour reforms, she said 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".

In December 2006, Greg Clark MP (a former SDP member, now a Conservative MP, and, as of 2010, the Minister of State for Decentralisation), an advisor to Tory leader David Cameron, claimed Toynbee should be an influence on the modern Conservative Party, causing a press furore. Cameron later clarified this to say 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.

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 has 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".

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.

In 2004 the Islamic Human Rights Commission awarded Toynbee the 'Most Islamophobic Media Personality' title in the Annual Islamophobia Awards, a claim she strongly contested. She claimed that she is simply a consistent atheist, and is just as critical of Christianity 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." 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”.

Honours

Toynbee was awarded an Honorary Degree 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.

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. She lives in a house in Clapham, South London and also owns a villa in Tuscany, Italy. Toynbee is married to David Walker, a Guardian journalist and former communications director of the Audit Commission.

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 978-1847080936

External links

• Guardian columns by Polly Toynbee
• Polly Toynbee's twitter feed
• Interview with Polly Toynbee focussing on religion with Third Way magazine, 22 June 1998
• Political Journalist of the Year 2003 citation
• 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