When did we last truly feel proud to be British?
For many, the answer is 2012, a year when Olympic fever gripped and united the nation. Fourteen years on, as I visit the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park and sit down with one of the people who made it happen, that sense of unity feels long forgotten.
Now 82, Richard Caborn is a former MP and Minister for Sport who served across three government departments and helped secure London’s 2012 Olympic bid. Having risen through Sheffield trade unions, Caborn witnessed the birth of New Labour and served Tony Blair in one of the most consequential and contested governments in modern British history.
Over a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea, he reflects on a lifetime in politics.
Richard Caborn was born in Sheffield in 1943. His mother worked as a dinner lady and was a strong Methodist while his father was a steel worker and Communist Party member. Both were active in the trade unions, and this unique blend of “Marxism to Methodism” profoundly shaped Caborn’s early political beliefs.
His views were also influenced by the city that granted him its Freedom in 2023. Sheffield was heavily bombed during the Second World War and post-war rebuilding efforts fostered a strong sense of community. “It was a time when people did come together,” Caborn says. “Everything had a sense of community about it. Working men’s clubs were huge influences and there was a strong working-class culture in the city.”
At 15, Caborn left school to follow his father into Sheffield’s steel industry as an apprentice. It was the post-war ‘Age of Affluence’, when living standards were rising and “there was a real buoyancy about the economy and lots of jobs”.
Caborn quickly became involved in the trade union movement, offering a route into politics. Unlike his father, he didn’t join the Communist Party, instead becoming a Labour member in the 1960s and working on Harold Wilson’s successful election campaigns in 1964 and 1966.
The Labour Party of that era was a “highly motivated, highly intelligent trade union movement”. Caborn, on the party’s left, was a supporter of Tony Benn who had a “radicalism on redistribution, ownership and access to education,” and a “desire to bring around fundamental change”.
It was through Europe that Caborn moved from trade unionist to full-time politician. Britain had become a member of the European Economic Community in 1973 and membership directly impacted the steel industry. Caborn, aided by his position as Vice-President of Sheffield Trades Council, was subsequently elected as a Member of the European Parliament for Sheffield in 1979.
Becoming an MEP was a baptism of fire. “I was sat between Barbara Castle and Willy Brandt as a young kid on the block and it was a massive learning curve,” he says. “Both culturally as well as politically”. Castle, a legendary former Labour minister, offered some pertinent advice. “If you are a minister, you are an agent of change, not just an administrator,” she told him. It was something he would remember in years to come.
The 1980s were not a kind decade for the Labour Party. In 1983, Caborn comfortably entered Parliament as the new MP for Sheffield Central; his party, however, was heavily defeated in a landslide victory for Margaret Thatcher. Labour’s manifesto was described by one MP as the “longest suicide note in history”. In 1987, the Conservatives won another landslide. Some doubted whether Labour would ever win again.
Away from his party’s domestic woes, Caborn was engaged in a different kind of battle. He had first become involved in the anti-apartheid movement as a trade union official in the 1970s. Now an MP, he became a treasurer of the movement and helped establish the All-Party Parliamentary Group for South Africa.
His participation led to a deep admiration for – and friendship with – Nelson Mandela, whom he describes as the “most impressive” person he had ever met, with “a gravitas that was difficult to describe”.
Not everyone agreed, however. BBC coverage of a Wembley Stadium concert to mark Mandela’s 70th birthday was nearly scrapped after Tory MPs claimed the broadcaster was funding “terrorism”. In 1990, following Mandela’s release from prison, Caborn had to fight to allow him to visit Parliament. The eventual visit was muted and Mandela had to enter through the back of Westminster Hall.
“Some people just didn’t know the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter,” Caborn says.
Having witnessed Mandela’s historic inauguration as the President of South Africa in 1994, Caborn flew back to England. Returning in the early hours, he chaired a select committee meeting before attending a party fundraiser in the evening. Tired, he said good night to Labour leader John Smith, also his friend and neighbour, and went to bed. The next morning, a call from the press woke him: Smith was dead.
The untimely death of Labour’s “absolutely brilliant” leader would prove to be the start of a new era for both the party and the country. Labour’s subsequent leadership election was won by Tony Blair, who rapidly accelerated the modernisation that had begun under Neil Kinnock’s leadership. New Labour was born.
While the story of those years often focuses on the combination of Blair and Brown, Caborn is quick to highlight the role of John Prescott, one of his closest allies and the party’s deputy leader. “There was a tripartite of leadership of the party,” he says, “Tony was a brilliant communicator, Gordon was the intellectual and John was the link between the Labour party and the trade unions.”
On Blair, Caborn says: “Tony is driven from a moral, Christian perspective. He didn’t have the same politics that Gordon, John and I had but he was fantastic. He is a good man, and he was the right person at that time.”
“That was the golden period. If you look at what we achieved with education, the health service, devolution, the minimum wage, there was massive social change in the country and there was greater redistribution than there has ever been before.”
For critics, however, that “golden period” remains overshadowed by the Iraq War and doubts about how far New Labour really tackled issues like inequality. “Did we get it all right? No, of course we didn’t,” he admits. “I saw Gordon Brown about a year ago and he said that we should have been far more radical”.
Following his party’s election victory in 1997, Caborn, a Labour frontbencher since the late 1980s, was appointed the Minister of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions. Despite his lack of government experience, Caborn drew upon Castle’s advice from all those years before.
“I’m a great supporter of the civil service,” he says, before adding with characteristic bluntness, “But you need to lead them, I knew all about how to negotiate because of the trade unions so civil servants did what they were told. There was none of that Yes, Minister crap with us!”
A strong advocate of regional government, Caborn helped to establish Regional Development Agencies, designed to drive growth and regeneration. In 1999, he became a member of the Privy Council and was reshuffled to the Department of Trade and Industry, rejecting a foreign office post in the process.
“Alistair (Campbell) told me that I was getting moved to the foreign office so I said you must be joking because the one thing I’m not is a diplomat,” he says, “I went in and said to Tony that ‘I don’t want to let you down and I don’t want to let myself down so just for safety I’ll go onto the backbenches’ and as I got up to leave, he offered me Trade Minister. I said yes, and Tony said, ‘Don’t say anything though because I’ve just given it to Brian Wilson!’”.
Two years later, Caborn was offered his “dream job”.
Appointed Minister for Sport in 2001, Caborn was told by Blair that “sport is a tool that has been massively underutilised in government” and he wanted it to be a “real motivator of change”. That approach was evident in the bid for the London 2012 Olympics, a process which Caborn began in 2001. “It was a fantastic journey,” he says, grinning.
Using his contacts, Caborn was able to secure the support of Mandela and David Beckham. Mandela was secured after Caborn was “a little bit economical with the truth” and told the South African President that the Queen would love it if he backed the bid. Mandela replied, “If the Queen wants me to back London, I will back it.”
“When I told the Queen that I had taken a bit of a liberty,” Caborn remembers, “she just stood there and smiled at me”.
By 2005, the two competing cities for the Olympics were London and Paris. “Everyone expected Paris to win,” Caborn says, “After the vote, all the world’s press were in front of the French delegation and that was the only time I had any doubt we might not win it”.
London won by just three votes – a “phenomenal” moment for Caborn. “We had a great team,” he says, “and that was a real experience”.
After nearly three decades in Parliament, Caborn stepped down in 2010, but he has continued to be actively involved with projects in Sheffield. Not least through the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, where he was chairman until 2023.
We speak amid the ongoing war in Iran and at a time when UK politics is becoming ever more polarised. Caborn’s party has changed dramatically from the one he joined over sixty years ago. Most of its MPs are not from union backgrounds, Parliament is “no longer representative of the country” and the current Labour government could only dream of matching New Labour’s initial popularity. But, despite this, Caborn is cautiously optimistic about the future.
“Every time Trump attacks Starmer, his ratings go up,” he says. “The war creates a scenario where the people want assurances and a safe pair of hands”.
“After globalisation and the financial crash of 2008, you are managing a very different world. If you compare the hand Keir has inherited to Tony’s, it is far more difficult for him, but I think that they will come good”.
Reflecting on his career, he says he wants to be remembered as someone who “came up from the shop floor through the unions” and stood for a sense of community. His message to University of Sheffield students is simple: “Take every single opportunity that you get and remember that integrity is absolutely crucial.”
As I pack away my notebook, Caborn finishes his sandwich and continues to talk about his beloved Sheffield United and the city he calls his own. “Sheffield is my city,” he says, “I absolutely love it and feel such a pride for it”. Perhaps the spirit of 2012 hasn’t faded after all.
