David Blankett
Great BritainBiography of David Blunkett
David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, has made history as the first blind person to reach such heights in any country. He has always been a figure of interest and admiration, with many continuing to believe in him even after his resignation in December of last year. At 57 years old, his life story can be transformed into a captivating novel filled with poverty, love, hardships, and resilience.
A Challenging Childhood
Blind from birth, David Blunkett achieved such success that he found it difficult to empathize with other disabled individuals who were less strong and less successful. He admits that it was not easy for him to hold office hours for his constituents in Sheffield: "People enter my office and start complaining: 'Mr. Blunkett, I am very ill.' I respond: 'I sympathize with you, please have a seat.' They begin to talk about how they cannot work due to high blood pressure or ulcerative colitis. I listen and think to myself: wait a minute, I have all these illnesses too. But I can't just tell them to their face: 'What nonsense are you talking about? I have had hypertension and ulcerative colitis for ten years, and I am blind, so please vacate the room.' Blunkett is convinced that every person can gather strength and fight. In reality, his life, despite the blows of fate, can be an inspiring example. Blindness was discovered shortly after his birth in June 1947. Due to an unfortunate combination of parental genes, the optic nerve did not develop in the infant.
A Challenging Education
Blunkett's parents raised him with the belief that with determination, he could achieve anything. However, when he was four years old, he was told that he would have to attend a special school for the blind, far away from home. There were tears and protests - how could they separate a four-year-old child from his family? But the municipality remained firm.
At the school, he was given a uniform and taken to a dormitory with nine other frightened newcomers. The first weeks were filled with the sound of children crying every night. Some lay in wet beds and didn't know what to do. They were completely helpless in every sense. There were no caretakers, and they had to dress, wash, and find their way around the school on their own. "Temporary mothers" - 16-17-year-old girls - accompanied the boys only for their weekly baths and were the only ones who gave the children warmth and loving hugs at night.
Sports became another outlet. In their games, David and his friends had special rules - they could throw the soccer ball with their hands, and the cricket balls had bells attached to them. Blind boys knew they risked being hit in the face by the ball, but it did not stop them. Riding bicycles and go-karting were considered even more reckless - these were David's favorite pastimes. Broken collarbones and fingers, bruises and cuts were the price they paid for playing with their sighted peers. By the age of 12, David, who had gained confidence, was ready to move on to secondary school. However, another challenge awaited him. His 67-year-old father, who worked in gas supply, fell into a giant boiler of boiling water. Although he should have been retired by then, he was highly valued and asked to teach the youth...
He fought for his life throughout the following month. David Blunkett still remembers the smell of boiled flesh that filled the hospital room and the exact time of his father's death - 3:34 am.
The gas company was reluctant to pay compensation to his widow. Even when his father was alive, they were poor, but now they became destitute. There was only bread and margarine to eat at home. As soon as Blunkett started earning money, the first thing he did was install a gravestone on his father's grave. He entered the second stage special school in short trousers, to the amusement of his new classmates, as his mother could not afford to buy him pants. After receiving a few blows, he realized that he would have to stand up for himself and succeeded, becoming one of the biggest troublemakers. A broken front tooth and scars remind the politician of the times when teachers wrote him warnings - "too noisy" or "unmanageable."
A Political Journey
At the age of 16, he had a confrontation with the headmaster of the college for the blind. The "innovative" headmaster did not want blind students to take exams - they were intellectually limited anyway. Blunkett already understood that this condemned students, including himself, to a life with limited horizons, where becoming a piano tuner was the height of their dreams. Along with five like-minded friends, he started attending classes at a regular technical college and passed exams there. The headmaster did not provide them with transportation, so the whole group had to make their way back closer to nightfall.
Independence and a passion for education, supported by his mother's belief that he, David, was not worse, but even better than sighted children, stayed with him for life. When Blunkett graduated with a degree in politics and social sciences and began his career in the Sheffield City Council, he was seen as a curious local phenomenon, with the assumption that a blind person could not become a national politician. So, his election as a Member of Parliament in 1987 seemed miraculous to many. But Blunkett's impact did not diminish even among a crowd of sophisticated politicians in the capital. On the contrary, he knew that his temperament, complete openness, and common sense added to his popularity: "I have no right to be a coward in front of people who are going to believe in me, and I don't want to be a standard government member spouting hollow speeches."
As the head of the Home Office in Tony Blair's government, David Blunkett set a historical precedent - no other blind person from birth had reached such heights in any country before him. What helped him rise to the top? Along with everything else, it was his work ethic and phenomenal memory. His predecessor in the position complained about the impossibility of keeping up with the huge amount of daily information, and how Blunkett managed to process all the material remains a mystery.
Every document that David Blunkett "read" was dictated to him on tape by assistants. The most important papers were transcribed in Braille. He learned to listen to the dictated tapes at an accelerated speed. To an untrained ear, the recordings sounded like gibberish from cartoon characters.
But even these abilities, exceeding those of ordinary humans, reached their limit when he had to study a 300-hour report on the Euro currency last year.
A former employee of Blunkett recalls that if there were small breaks in the work schedule, he would never relax, instead filling those breaks by listening to recordings of chapters from books. His brain constantly craved new information.
Without the ability to see his interlocutor, he learned to sense moods and hidden motives. He could detect when someone was lying by changes in their voice, even if the person remained silent. People said that his insightfulness instilled a superstitious fear in them.
He used his gift during Cabinet meetings to assess his colleagues' engagement in discussions and paid attention to seemingly insignificant sounds like coughing, rocking on a chair, or rustling papers.
Blunkett's heightened senses, sensitive fingers, phenomenal hearing, and keen sense of smell are characteristic of blind individuals. While visiting Prince Charles in the gardens of Highgrove, he couldn't help but appreciate the scent of various flowers and told the prince that lavender was prevalent. "No," Charles replied, "that's my lavender aftershave."
During a dinner with journalists, he overheard people at a distant table talking ill of him, calling him a fascist. Asking the journalists not to write about what was about to happen, he walked through the restaurant to the table where he was being discussed and said that he had heard the whole conversation. As free individuals, they had the right to criticize his work, but he did not give them the right to resort to personal insults. Eyewitnesses said that the faces of the critics turned bright red.
In reality, while serving as Home Secretary, Blunkett gave people plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied - new laws regarding immigrants, especially illegal ones; measures to prevent terrorist acts; and the proposal to introduce mandatory identity cards for citizens, which many considered undemocratic. He was accused of sacrificing individual freedom for the security of society.
However, he had to resign not because of his tough line, but because of a great love. He was never particularly lucky with women. His first youthful romance ended badly - the girl left him, and David fell into depression. Then, taking the initiative into his own hands, he found a pen pal, Maria, and the pair exchanged letters regularly, although he did not rush to reveal that he was blind. When he visited her in Malta in the summer of 1968, Maria's family was horrified - instead of the young hopeful clerk, a half-blind man with uncertain prospects arrived at their home.
Upon returning home, he locked himself within four walls and developed a form of agoraphobia - every time he stepped outside, he felt like he was being watched and talked about.
But when he decided to overcome his problem and make friends, he started attending a youth club at a Methodist church. One evening, David gathered the courage to ask a girl to dance. "No, thanks," a man replied, whom he mistakenly approached. After that, Blunkett felt that his whole life would be a series of various humiliations.
Meeting Ruth changed a lot. He was glad that the girl took him seriously and married her in 1970, despite his mother's grim predictions. They lived 20 years in a "loveless marriage," as he described it. They raised three sons and separated as friends. Immediately after her ex-husband's resignation, Ruth rejected an offer from a Sunday newspaper to share the details of their family life for £50,000.
Blunkett succeeded in many areas of his life, but it seems that he is not destined to experience a normal family life, the kind his parents lived and from which he was torn away as a four-year-old child.
A beautiful American woman with dark shiny hair, Kimberly Quinn jokingly tormented him when they first met, claiming to be a tall blonde and innocently asking what it was like to sleep with a blind man. He thought - the love of his life had come to him. Their three-year secret relationship (Kimberly was married) led to the birth of a boy, his son, as Blunkett found out after a DNA test, and then to a new pregnancy and a complete breakdown of their relationship, at Kimberly's insistence. She became scared of his serious intentions and depth of his feelings. What this educated socialite woman did not expect was that Blunkett, in the struggle for recognition of his paternity, would not hesitate to go public. After exchanging blows, Quinn brought the fact of Blunkett's abuse of his office to public attention. He did indeed expedite the visa process for their son's Filipino nanny.
The situation worsened with quotes from his new biography, where he venomously spoke of his cabinet colleagues. He called some weak, others incompetent, and still others resistant to change. He spoke the truth, but people who could have stood up for him turned away in offense.
Blunkett was pursued by crowds of journalists, frightening even his accustomed guide dog. Not a single news broadcast went by without mentioning the Filipino nanny.
On the morning of his resignation, David Blunkett did not hide his shock. What seemed like the greatest joy and the beginning of future happiness had destroyed his career.
"I hope that when the little boy grows up, he will understand that his father cared for him so much that he sacrificed his career," he will say, holding back tears.
He can be called a man who loved too much. But some distant observers, far from romance, saw him as an insensitive egotist who wanted to destroy a family. Kimberly evokes sympathy - a woman on the verge of a breakdown due to the scandal. Their shared son is bound to suffer emotional trauma in the future. The force and brutal honesty that brought Blunkett-politician success did not help him solve personal problems.
But after his departure, the British political scene became dull. "The peacock has flown away, leaving only sparrows," remarked journalists. They attacked him in the midst of the scandal but then suddenly remembered that none of the great politicians were saints. David Lloyd George was involved in scandalous stories involving money and women. Winston Churchill, although a devoted husband, was a heavy drinker.
In the end, Blunkett fought for the woman he loved and his son, with no prostitutes or promiscuous affairs involved. What others would not forgive another contemporary figure, people still contemplate when it comes to Blunkett - he is just not like the others.
Sympathy and hopes that he will return to national politics are often expressed. The intellect and knowledge of this man are enormous, and it is unlikely that his own Labour Party will allow them to go unused. Moreover, it is doubtful that he himself will be able to remain in the shadows for long.
