Dare to Be a Daniel

by Tony Benn

  Trying to be constructive, I consulted the seventeenth-century precedents, when the abuse of Executive power had reached similar proportions, and decided that we should send a humble address to Her Majesty. I have drafted it, and I would be grateful for support from all parties. I have written to certain Privy Counsellors.

  The draft reads:

  That a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Royal Prerogatives relating to the making of war and the commitment of the Armed Services to the present military operations in the Balkans be now placed at the disposal of the House of Commons for the purpose of permitting Members of Parliament to debate and vote upon a substantive Motion on the merits of that policy and any alternative Motions that might be moved designed to lay the foundations of a just and peaceful settlement in line with Britain’s international obligations.

  I wish that this debate was about our role. The media have taken over. The governor of a Central Bank, not elected by proportional representation, although one might have expected that from those who favour it, is coming along, as is Rupert Murdoch. They are squeezing us …

  We must restore parliamentary democracy in Britain before it is ultimately squeezed out. I genuinely fear that, so I hope that the speeches that follow will not be a further exchange of hustings schoolboy abuse, but will try seriously to address the question that must concern us all: have the House of Commons and the people whom we represent any role whatever in the decisions that matter in our lives, or are we merely spectators of our fate, and not participants in the future that we want to shape?

  HOUSE OF COMMONS SPEECH DURING THE PASSAGE OF THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION BILL, 5 APRIL 2000

  First, I congratulate the Members of the House on both sides who have fought this campaign. I regard this as the beginning of a recovery of power by the legislature in dealing with the Executive. This debate and its conclusion will be seen as very significant in the development of parliamentary democracy.

  Of course, there have been some moves towards this. The government of whom I was a Member introduced Green Papers to allow consultation. However, the Bill is a disappointment. The older I get, the more I realise how difficult past reforms were. I am not sure that the Home Secretary [Jack Straw] would encourage the publication of Hansard. He might well say – [Interruption] Hon. Members laugh, but there was a battle; Hansard was put in prison. I am not joking. The argument would be that it would not be in the public interest for the public to know what was said in Parliament.

  We are approaching the heart of the democratic deficit. Ministers say, ‘The democratic deficit means that I must decide, not the House of Commons.’ However, the fault line in democracy does not lie in what ministers say. When we first arrive at the House as MPs, we all have to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown. As this is the High Court of Parliament, I always assumed that I should take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That seems to be an appropriate oath for a Member approaching the High Court of Parliament. Privy Counsellors take another oath. The truth is that, at that moment, the Executive, in the form of ministers, are standing against Parliament and the public interest. That is what the matter is really about.

  Ministers are often kept in the dark. When I was in the Cabinet, I once said that I wished we had freedom of information for Cabinet ministers – but that was seen as an inappropriate joke. However, I should be very surprised if the Home Secretary knows much about what the security services are doing. If he does, he is the first Home Secretary ever to do so. He is a manager and we are representatives. The division between the government and the House is the real division.

  The longer I served in government – I was a minister for eleven years – the more I found that it was easy for people to confuse the public interest with the convenience of ministers. That is easy to do; if it embarrasses ministers, it cannot be in the public interest – but in fact, it is not in the interest of ministers.

  That argument leads to another point: I cannot think of any secrets that I ever knew. I do not want to disappoint those Members who are hoping for office, but those of us who have held office know that there are few secrets in government. I knew what would be in the Budget twenty-four hours before it was announced, and was afraid that I should sleepwalk and tell somebody. I knew that we were going to devalue the pound forty-eight hours before we did so. I knew the government’s position on negotiations with foreign governments – that all came out when the negotiations took place. I knew what would be in the honours list before it came out – but everybody knows that.

  In the old days, if the fact that a man was to be given a peerage was leaked, that ruled it out completely. Nowadays, the immigration laws have been amended; if one agrees to live here, one is put in the House of Lords. However, that is another question.

  The real reason why I want to contribute to the debate is because of the nuclear industry, for which I had responsibility for many years. Recent events at Sellafield confirm what I learned by experience; even as a minister – let alone a Member of Parliament – I was never told the truth by the nuclear industry. For example, I found out about the fire at Windscale – now called Sellafield – only when I visited Tokyo. My officials had never told me about it. When I asked them why they had not done so, they said, ‘It was before you were a minister.’

  When the Americans discovered that there had been an explosion at Khysthm, the major Soviet reprocessing plant, I was never told. I asked the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He replied, ‘We were told by the Central Intelligence Agency not to tell British ministers, because it could create concern about the safety of nuclear power.’

  It was not until I left office that I discovered that, while I had been making honest speeches about atoms for peace, all the plutonium from our civil nuclear power stations was going to America to make the bomb. The atoms-for-peace power stations were bomb factories for the Pentagon. I felt affronted by that. Had people known the facts at the time, the development of the debate on nuclear power and the nuclear industry would have been much better informed. We should not have had the problem at Sellafield, because the matter would probably have been dealt with earlier.

  These provisions are probably the most important in the Bill. After thirty years, we can find out at the Public Record Office what ministers have done, but if we want the public to have an influence on their government, they must know about the debate before it is concluded. I realise that there are arguments about fact and advice, but I have never believed that information about the nature of government policy-making was damaging.

  What is damaging are leaks, malice, and so on … People with knowledge of a situation could contribute. The trouble with the official secrets that surround the government is that they lock ministers in with their officials.

  Some ministers are rather like constitutional monarchs. They can say yes or no to their Permanent Secretaries. However, once we let it be known publicly that we are considering a matter, we make available to ministers a range of advice that they would not be able to get from within Whitehall, and that allows them to become umpires between their civil servants and public expertise outside. I therefore make the case – I hope that it does not shock anyone – that open government and freedom of information are good for ministers, not just for Parliament and the public. That argument needs examination …

  I hope that public opinion makes it clear to the Home Secretary and others that we are not prepared to accept that we should be treated as children and left outside the inner knowledge of what happens. It denies ministers the advice that they need, and the public the opportunity to participate in some way in their future, rather than being just spectators of their fate.

  HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE ON THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY, 20 NOVEMBER 1991

  Prime Minister John Major took part in crucial meetings (inter-governmental conferences) in late 1991, meetings that were to result in Britain’s agreement to the Treaty on Euro
pean Union (the Maastricht Treaty) of December 1991. This established the European Union in place of the Community, and expanded political, economic and social integration among the member states.

  Three points about the debate have interested me. First, there is fundamental agreement among the three party leaders. The Prime Minister is on the eve of negotiations so he has to be cautious. The Leader of the Opposition [Neil Kinnock], who hopes to take over, can be bolder. The Liberal Democrats, who are far from office, can be quite clear about their objective. There is no disagreement about the idea, that we should move from the original membership of the Community through the Single European Act to something stronger. Secondly, a degree of caution has emerged from people who, when they discussed the matter twenty years ago, were far more uncritical. Thirdly – I say this with some satisfaction – twenty-one years after I urged a referendum, I have won the right hon. Member for Finchley [Margaret Thatcher] and the right hon. Member for Yeovil [Paddy Ashdown] to my cause. I had to wait twenty-one years, but it has been worth waiting for some recognition of the fact that the people have a right to a say in their government.

  I do not want to go over old ground, because this is not a question of yes or no to the status quo; we are looking to the future. Some people genuinely believe that we shall never get social justice from the British government, but we shall get it from Jacques Delors. They believe that a good king is better than a bad Parliament. I have never taken that view. Others believe that the change is inevitable, and that the common currency will protect us from inflation and will provide a wage policy. They believe that it will control speculation and that Britain cannot survive alone. None of those arguments persuade me because the argument has never been about sovereignty.

  I do not know what a sovereign is, apart from the one that used to be in gold, and the Pope, who is a sovereign in the Vatican. We are talking about democracy. No nation – not even the great United States which could, for all I know, be destroyed by a nuclear weapon from a Third World country – has the power to impose its will on other countries. We are discussing whether the British people are to be allowed to elect those who make the laws under which they are governed. The argument is nothing to do with whether we should get more maternity leave from Madame Papandreou than from Madame Thatcher. That is not the issue.

  I recognise that, when the members of the three Front Benches agree, I am in a minority. My next job therefore is to explain to the people of Chesterfield what we have decided. I will say first, ‘My dear constituents, in future you will be governed by people whom you do not elect and cannot remove. I am sorry about it. They may give you better crèches and shorter working hours but you cannot remove them.’

  I know that it sounds negative, but I have always thought it positive to say that the important thing about democracy is that we can remove without bloodshed the people who govern us. We can get rid of a Callaghan, a Wilson or even a right hon. Lady by internal processes. We can get rid of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon [John Major]. But that cannot be done in the structure that is proposed. Even if one likes the policies of the people in Europe, one cannot get rid of them …

  We must ask what will happen when people realise what we have done. We have had a marvellous debate about Europe, but none of us has discussed our relationship with the people who sent us here. Hon. Members have expressed views on Albania and the Baltic States. I have been dazzled by the knowledge of the continent of which we are all part. No one has spoken about how he or she got here and what we were sent here to do.

  If people lose the power to sack their government, one of several things happens. First, people may just slope off. Apathy could destroy democracy. When the turnout drops below 50 per cent, we are in danger …

  The second thing that people can do is to riot. Riot is an old-fashioned method of drawing the attention of the government to what is wrong. It is difficult for an elected person to admit it, but the riot at Strangeways produced some prison reforms. Riot has historically played a much larger part in British politics than we are ever allowed to know.

  Thirdly, nationalism can arise. Instead of blaming the Treaty of Rome, people say, ‘It is those Germans’, or, ‘It is the French.’ Nationalism is built out of frustration that people feel when they cannot get their way through the ballot box. With nationalism comes repression. I hope that it is not pessimistic – in my view it is not – to say that democracy hangs by a thread in every country of the world. Unless we can offer people a peaceful route to the resolution of injustices through the ballot box, they will not listen to a House that has blocked off that route. There are many alternatives open to us … this is not the only Europe on offer.

  I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South [Chris Mullin], is a democratic federalist, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East [Harry Barnes]. They want an American-type constitution for Europe. It could be that our laws would hang on which way the Albanian members voted. I could not complain about that, because that is democracy, but it is unworkable. It is like trying to get an elephant to dance through a minefield, but it would be democratic.

  Another way would be to have a looser, wider Europe. I have an idea for a Commonwealth of Europe. I am introducing a Bill on the subject. Europe would be rather like the British Commonwealth. We would work by consent with people. Or we could accept this ghastly proposal, which is clumsy, secretive, centralised, bureaucratic and divisive. That is how I regard the Treaty of Rome. I was born a European and I will die one, but I have never put my alliance behind the Treaty of Rome. I object to it. I hate being called an anti-European. How can one be anti-European when one is born in Europe? It is like saying that one is anti-British if one does not agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What a lot of nonsense it is.

  If democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives, but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

  MY LAST PARLIAMENTARY SPEECH, 22 MARCH 2001

  This speech was made following the report of the Procedure Select Committee, which proposed changes to the way the Speaker is elected by the House of Commons.

  I ask the indulgence of the House. This may be my last speech, so if I am out of order, Mr Speaker, I hope that you will allow me to range widely.

  I support the report of the Procedure Committee and the motion proposed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House [Margaret Beckett]. The report is scholarly and historical; it considers all the arguments. My only difference with it is over the question of a secret ballot. I have always understood that if one votes as oneself, it must be secret. Years ago, when I was canvassing in Bristol, I asked a woman to support me and she replied, ‘Mr Benn, the ballet is secret.’ I thought of her dancing alone in the bedroom, where no candidate was allowed to know about it. However, when we vote in a representative capacity, people must know what we have done, so I shall vote for the amendment. The Committee has done very well. I hope that the House accepts the report.

  The old system had serious difficulties. Although I disagreed strongly with the Father of the House [Edward Heath], he carried out his duties with exceptional skill – with panache! I felt that he was the only Member of the House who could have turned the Beefeaters into a fighting force – he showed such passion and commitment to the rules. We got the Speaker we wanted and I hope that, as a result of today’s proceedings, we shall get the system we want – the one that I advocated, as the House will recall.

  As I have done on previous occasions – when we were electing a Speaker – I want to look a little more broadly at the role of the Speaker. Often, we tend to think of the Speaker in relation only to the Chamber, but the Speaker’s role is of much wider importance. Relations between the legislatur
e and the Executive go through the Speaker of the House.

  We live in a strange country: we do not elect our head of state; we do not elect the second Chamber. We elect only this House, and even in this House enormous power is vested in the prerogatives. The Prime Minister can go to war without consulting us, sign treaties without consulting us, agree to laws in Brussels without consulting us, and appoint bishops, peers and judges without consulting us. The role of the Speaker today compared with that of Mr Speaker Lenthall is that you, Mr Speaker, are protecting us from the triple powers of Buckingham Palace, the Millbank Tower and Central Office, which, in combination, represent as serious a challenge to our role.

  Then there is the link between the Commons and the people. I have seen many schoolchildren taken around the House, and have talked to some of them about how it has been a home of democracy for hundreds of years. In 1832, only 2 per cent of the population had the vote. That may seem a long time ago, but it was only eighteen years before my grandfather was born. When I was born, women were not allowed the vote until they were thirty. Democracy – input from the people – is very, very new. The link between popular consent and the decisions of the House can be tenuous.

  Furthermore, nowadays, Parliament representing the will of the people has to cope with many extra-parliamentary forces – very threatening extra-parliamentary forces. I refer not to demonstrations, but to the power of the media, the power of the multinationals, the power of Brussels and the power of the World Trade Organisation – all wholly unelected people.