The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  I loathe the Common Market. It’s bureaucratic and centralised, there’s no political discussion, officials control Ministers, and it just has a horrible flavour about it. But of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except Britain have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans. It is such a complex psychological relationship. But our self-confidence is flowing back now.

  Friday 4 November

  This morning the headlines were hysterical. The Financial Times had ‘Callaghan Warns of Winter Strikes; Labour Ready to Fight Unions on Pay’. The Guardian: ‘PM Appeals for Restraint through Hard Winter’. ‘I’ll Stand up to Miners Says Jim’ from the Sun and ‘Lights Stay Off; Blackout Threat to Kidney Patients’ in the Daily Mirror. The Morning Star: ‘Power Peace Hope Fades’. The Daily Mail: ‘We’ll Fight the Strikes’. The Times: ‘Prime Minister Appeals to the Nation for Support in Winter of Dislocation’.

  Monday 7 November

  The papers are full of attacks on the firemen’s strike and the power workers’ strike. Yet the Daily Mirror carried a report that Princess Anne has spent £100,000 on new stables with a swimming pool to clean her horses and special lighting and heating in the stables so that they dry off immediately after a race. This is the Britain of Jubilee year.

  At 5 we heard that an 84-year-old woman had died in hospital shortly after having an operation which had been interrupted by a power cut. In fact, she had had three heart attacks, one before, one during and one after the power cut. The operation had taken place in a high-risk warning period, the standby generator had failed, and she had been resuscitated and died after the power had been restored.

  Tuesday 8 November

  Over to Number 10 for EY Committee. Jim took me aside before the meeting. ‘I hear you’re saying this is not a problem for the Government. You’re not suggesting the power workers be paid?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t present a problem for the Government,’ I said.

  ‘But this is unofficial action.’

  ‘Jim, are you after winning the pay policy or grinding every shop steward’s face into the mud? You must leave me with some discretion on how I handle this matter. I’m trying to improve the Government’s position.’

  I had a message from James Bretherton that John Lyons, General Secretary of the Engineers’ and Managers’ Association, had rung with regard to my favouring the unofficial strikers’ demand that they shouldn’t lose any pay. His men have been helping to cover the strikers’ work. Lyons said that, if such payments were made, his members would withdraw their support. I must say his influence throughout this dispute has been entirely unhelpful and negative.

  Ronny King Murray, the Lord Advocate, had some urgent news for me. ‘You are shortly going to get a memorandum on a proposed change of policy on AEA guards. It will suggest that people holding plutonium should be shot on sight. I want you to know because this will be presented to you as the view of all the law officers, but it is not my view.’ I was grateful for the information.

  Monday 14 November

  On my way to work this morning, it made me sad to see the firemen picketing outside the fire station just behind the Army and Navy store in Victoria. These men of such courage, who lose a man a fortnight in fires and are paid below the national average income, are now being put in the dock. But the ones who appeared on television today, the first day of the strike, came over very well. They were asked about their consciences and they replied. ‘We have got consciences but a conscience can’t pay the mortgage.’

  Every time they show soldiers fighting fires, it draws attention to the tremendous dangers that face firemen. I don’t think the Government is going to win on this.

  Tuesday 15 November

  At 10.15 I went to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee [DOP] of Cabinet at which we were discussing the Falkland Islands. I am not a member of DOP as a whole and I am involved only with respect to the oil in the region. All the Chiefs of Staff were there. Before us was a secret Joint Intelligence Committee report marked ‘Delicate Source – UK Eyes Only’ which pointed out that the Argentinian forces were strong enough to take over the Falkland Islands, with their population of 1,950, without a shot being fired. David Owen reported that the Argentinians were likely to be very tough if the negotiations scheduled for December in New York fell through.

  When I was called I said I appreciated the gravity of the situation but to divide the sovereignty of the islands with a three-mile limit from the sovereignty of the areas outside, where the oil is, could have tremendously damaging implications for us. It might be better to be defeated on this point than to concede it now. Going to UN arbitration was ruled out because world opinion was against us.

  Jim, in a very John Bullish mood, said, ‘World opinion may be against us, but they might feel differently if the Argentinians attack the Falklands.’ So he asked the navy to send out two frigates and possibly a nuclear submarine before the negotiations began. A very tough line.

  We were all sworn to secrecy about the military operations. I don’t like secrets.

  To the Friends of the Earth reception to celebrate the end of the Windscale Inquiry and had a long talk to Walt Patterson and Tom Burke, the director. They are a great crowd. They’ve done very well, and gradually their view is beginning to be taken seriously. I must get them into the Labour Party.

  Tuesday 22 November

  This evening I was handed a letter from Number 10 referring to a meeting I had arranged with colleagues to discuss the Europe direct elections Bill.

  Dear Tony,

  I am attaching a copy of a letter which was found by a Conservative on the top of the copying machine and handed to my office. You will see it says there is to be a meeting of Ministers in your room tonight and is signed by Michael Meacher, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the Department of Trade.

  As you are aware, no meeting of Ministers should be called without my knowledge and agreement I do not know whether you are aware of this letter but I am sure that now you know about it, you will cancel the proposed meeting.

  Yours sincerely,

  Jim Callaghan

  The pressure is building up, and if this continues I am going to be in deep trouble. I don’t believe for a moment that Michael left a copy on the copying machine. Anyway, it’s out now, and I should think it will be all over the place. I decided to do nothing about it. Why should I cancel the meeting? I meet Michael and Peter and John every week – have done for years – without the Prime Minister’s permission.

  Later I went to see Michael Foot in his room, and Peter Shore and John Silkin were there. Michael was red and angry. ‘What’s this about this meeting you’re having with the junior Ministers tonight?’

  ‘I told you this morning.’

  ‘Well,’ he shouted, ‘I think it’s bloody crooked that you should hold it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘We agreed we would do nothing and keep in touch and meet early this week,’ said Michael.

  ‘Fine, I’ve never said we wouldn’t. I haven’t made a statement, I’m just consulting people. I’m not going to be told I’m bloody crooked. The only other time that has ever been said to me was in this room by Dick Crossman, who called me a bloody twister, and I walked out. I won’t be called bloody crooked. I am entitled to consult whom I like.’

  ‘You’ve no business to do that,’ said Michael. ‘You know very well how it will be interpreted.’

  ‘Michael, I am awfully sorry, but, if Ministers are not allowed to meet, who authorised this meeting?’

  He withdrew his remark about my being ‘bloody crooked’ and I said we’d leave it at that.

  Then we began arguing about how to vote in the direct elections Bill. Michael started on me again. ‘You just want the Tories in, and then we will be in the Common Market for life.’ He says that every time, before every Election: do everything he tells you or the Tories will get in. ‘You, w
ith your halo of martyrdom,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve been anti-Market longer than you.’

  The fact is, they are turning the flamethrower on me, and I have no doubt whatever that if I did leave the Government and then we lost the Election the defeat would be attributed to me. I said surely there was room for one person in the Cabinet who actually believed in the Party’s policies. Michael did at least apologise, but my links with him are severed completely.

  Went back to my room and at 9 Brian Sedgemore, Michael Meacher and Margaret Jackson came for the meeting. I told them about Jim’s letter and said, ‘If you want to slip off, now’s the moment to do it.’ Michael Meacher was horrified by the story about finding his letter on the photocopier. Then Bob Cryer joined us and we talked for an hour.

  It was quite clear that none of them wanted to go as far as voting against the Bill so we left it at that.

  Tuesday 29 November

  After lunch Brian Sedgemore and I went for a walk round St James’s Park with Dennis Skinner. I have a lot of time for Dennis.

  Wednesday 30 November

  After lunch I began the campaign to defeat the guillotine which is being imposed on the European Elected Assembly Bill. Dennis Skinner said his contact was Norman Tebbit, who is very anti-Europe.

  Monday 12 December

  Press conference in the Department, Bernard Ingham’s last, as he is leaving to take over as head of the Energy Conservation Department, something I suggested to Jack Rampton when I was getting on badly with Bernard, but I’m sorry to see him go now.

  Frances and Francis came in all excited because Kenneth Berrill has submitted his paper on nuclear reactor choice, on which the final decision is to be made next Friday, and he attacks the paper Bruce Millan and I have jointly submitted. Berrill says we should start series-ordering of PWRs. Astonishing! I asked to see the PM to discuss it.

  Here is the head of the CPRS (the Think Tank – none of whom is an expert in nuclear matters) writing a paper flatly contradicting the two Secretaries of State responsible. This is a big constitutional point. The CPRS is now the Cabinet Office voice, with full membership of the Cabinet. It’s the imposition of a sort of unelected European Commission on to the British system.

  Sunday 18 December

  Something I forgot to record. The other night Caroline came to dinner at the House, and we met Harold Wilson in the corridor. It was the first time I had spoken to him since his farewell dinner in 1976. It was clear that we couldn’t avoid saying something to him, so as I passed I remarked, ‘I saw your programme on Gladstone.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but they cut out a lot of what I said about his sex life.’ He’s a lonely, isolated figure now. Caroline has a theory that he stumbled on a security plot against himself and that those responsible were now trying to discredit him in order to prevent him from ever speaking out about it – an interesting thought.

  Monday 19 December

  At 9 I had a meeting on the safety of oil rigs with Frank Kearton and John Archer of the Department’s Marine Division. Frank warned that rigs were desperately dangerous installations because they compress gas at 6,000 atmospheres in confined spaces, and that a leak would cause a massive explosion killing up to 200 people. The proposal was that I press ahead with an inquiry into the safety of the rigs using two engineers and two trade unionists.

  John Archer, who is Chairman of the Marine Safety Committee – an interdepartmental committee – said there were uncompleted reports on fire, the safety of cranes, rigs and platforms under construction, and divers and standby vessels, and he hoped to have these reports in six months. He didn’t want anything superimposed.

  I reserved the right to take the matter to Cabinet colleagues.

  Sunday 25 December

  Christmas Day. Although our eldest child is twenty-seven next year, they all turned up at home at 8 am to exchange presents and came into the bedroom to give us ours. The children love Christmas, and Caroline makes it such a marvellous occasion. Thirteen of us sat down to lunch.

  Wednesday 28 December

  I rang the manager of The Clash, a political punk rock group, because there had been a suggestion from the BBC Television Community Programme Unit that I have a four-minute discussion with the group. I have grave doubts about a Cabinet Minister appearing with a punk rock group, given what the media would make of it, and he agreed with me that four minutes was not enough for a serious discussion. But what he said was interesting. The Clash are apparently very popular with working-class youngsters, who don’t find anything in our popular culture that meets their needs or reflects their feelings. He told me the group were not really concerned with being commercial and refused a lot of television because it put them into an artificial setting when they were really a live group. They are popular in Sweden, France and Yugoslavia. He said that to get any attention at all you had to be absolutely bizarre, but to understand what The Clash were trying to say you had to work really hard because the lyrics were in pidgin French.

  Saturday 31 December

  In my heart of hearts I believe the country is moving sharply to the right. The trade union leaders are so enjoying their corporatist relationship with the Government that they don’t want to hear anything about socialism. The real battle is within the Labour Movement now and it is a struggle for the soul of the Movement. Jim Callaghan is riding high. The press loves him because he’s openly right wing in the Cabinet, at public meetings and in the PLP. The Executive is hanging on to what remaining influence it has. It may be that one has to lengthen one’s timescale – the whole of the 1980s may pass before we see a change.

  Dictating this now, on the last day of the year, I feel depressed about it all, but I know that when we meet and start working on the General Election, which is likely to be in 1978, then the vitality will return.

  The major issues of the 1980s will be the battle against federalism in the Common Market, the struggle to get back to full employment and to sustain the Welfare State, and the question of civil liberties and the role of the security services.

  Monday 9 January 1978

  Chaired the NEC Home Policy Committee, where we passed a resolution condemning Judge Neil McKinnon. He had discharged Kingsley Read, a leader of the British National Party, in a case where Read had referred to ‘coons, wogs and niggers’. McKinnon had actually wished him well, saying this had been a free country until the Race Relations Act had been introduced. He even ignored Read’s comment on the death of an Asian – that it was ‘one down and a million to go’.

  Tuesday 10 January

  The Mail had a front-page spread drawing attention to my role in the unanimous resolution denouncing Judge McKinnon. The Sun had a headline, ‘Wedgie in War on “Coon” Case Judge’.

  Gladys Spearman-Cook, who runs a paper called the Occult Gazette, wrote to me saying I was a disaster, and God would strike me down. She was previously a great supporter and had described me as a reborn King Arthur, at the time of the Referendum!

  Sunday 15 January

  In the evening I reluctantly went to the Foots’ house and I found it very depressing. For the first time I felt I had nothing in common with any of them. Tommy Balogh is a thoughtful, independent chap but Peter Shore has moved to the right in a really tough way that makes him another Callaghan. Michael is just lost.

  The whole Labour leadership now is totally demoralised and all the growth on the left is going to come up from the outside and underneath. This is the death of the Labour Party. It believes in nothing any more, except staying in power.

  Saturday 28 January

  At Temple Meads Station in Bristol waiting for the late train back to London, I went to the buffet on the platform and bought a sandwich, a Fry’s chocolate bar, some Wrigley’s spearmint gum and an apple. I was about to pay when an old man in a raincoat pushed forward and thrust a pound note at the girl. I thought he was trying to get ahead of me and I was going to say, ‘Excuse me’, but it turned out that he was paying for my food, which came to 54 pence. He turned to me and sai
d, ‘I know you, I know who you are’, left the money and disappeared. I did not know what to do, but thought it was very touching.

  Tuesday 14 February

  Neil Kinnock came to lunch, and Caroline advised me to let him talk. Well, there was no problem there because he talked for an hour. He hadn’t really thought deeply about the political situation and his conclusions were incredibly non-radical for a member of the Tribune Group. He believed that ‘Emperor Jim with his quiet-life policy’ was right for the Party and that this would be more comforting than Thatcher’s divisiveness. We couldn’t defeat right-wing populism, and his recommendations were so modest that they might have emerged from a latter-day Liberal. He often gave me the impression that he is not altogether serious. Not that he made jokes, but his arguments were just not convincing, and I found it rather depressing because I had looked to Neil for some sort of cutting edge.

  Brian Sedgemore told me later that Neil was playing it long and didn’t believe anything would happen until the late Eighties. But on his present performance I’m not sure he would have much to say even then.

  Sunday 19 February

  Caroline and I left for Chequers with Ron at about 9.45. It was a rather nice idea of Jim’s that we should bring our wives, and Caroline had a swim in the heated pool.

  We went up for the Cabinet at 11 and Jim said he would like to begin with a few items that weren’t strictly related to the Budget and the pay situation. First he had some evidence that Margaret Thatcher was going to make a speech about law and order this weekend to try to influence the Ilford by-election, and Roy Hattersley had confirmed this because she had talked about nothing but muggings recently, no doubt to prepare the way. Jim said we would have to pre-empt that. Merlyn is going to make a statement this week.

  Then he said he would like Ministers to make more speeches on Saturdays and Sundays. ‘I know that Ministers don’t usually make speeches over the weekend, not that I tap anyone’s telephone’ (which I thought was a strange comment), ‘but we must now broaden the issues on which we speak beyond departmental interests.’