The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  ‘Well, I think we may change the decision to get one-third, one-third, one-third at the Conference this year,’ he said.

  ‘You may or may not; I am not particularly hyped on percentages. But that’s not the point. The point is that the election will take place on the electoral college.’

  Michael said, ‘Well, it will be very much to your credit if you decide not to stand.’

  ‘I am sure I will be clobbered if I stand, but I don’t think that is really the issue. Denis wasn’t elected by anybody, he was just allowed in unopposed, and so there is a genuine vacancy for the deputy leadership.’

  That was how we more or less left it, but he was white and angry, as he always is.

  Friday 27 March

  Did a lot of phoning round and inviting people on Sunday to plan the deputy leadership campaign.

  Saturday 28 March

  A perfect spring day. The horrible winter seems to be behind us and the spring is coming; by God we need it.

  The launch of the Social Democratic Party took place last Thursday and it was exactly as everybody predicted – a major media festival. It is unreal and potentially dangerous. It reminds me of what Tawney said. The attack on the two-party system, the attack on the democratic process, the attack on choice, the attack on debate, the attack on policy – all these have within them the ingredients of Fascism. Of course, as British politics returns to the nineteenth century, it is appropriate that there should be two bourgeois parties – the Conservatives and the Social Democrats. In my heart, I don’t believe it can capture support, though it is going to be a huge long struggle to get through to the British people and to create conditions under which they can really govern themselves.

  Sunday 29 March

  The group arrived – Tony Banks, Ken Coates, Vladimir Derer, Jenny and Stuart Holland, Frances Morrell, Stephen, Chris Mullin, Reg Race, Victor Schonfield, Audrey Wise and Valerie Wise. We had three hours’ intense discussion. First of all there was absolutely no doubt that I should stand as a candidate: it was unanimous. It was agreed that I should issue a statement announcing why I was accepting the candidature, and it was agreed that the issue should not be raised at the Tribune Group on the grounds that it had nothing to do with them.

  It was also agreed that an attempt would be made to get people to sign a simple statement saying, ‘I support the candidature of Tony Benn for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party’, and these signatures would come to me by Wednesday. I would put out on 2 April a statement giving my reasons, a draft of which we went through very carefully. A lot of amendments were made.

  Chris Mullin stayed, and we went through four chapters of the new book, Arguments for Democracy. I drove him home and then went to see Mother, who is a bit better, but I’ll have to keep an eye on her, what with her arthritis, her heart trouble, her hernia, her eyesight, her migraine, her new knee and her bad hip. She needs watching, but her mind is as clear as a bell.

  A very useful day and a historic decision taken collectively.

  Thursday 2 April

  The media reaction has been exactly as I expected; tomorrow it will be completely hysterical, just as at the time of the Common Market Referendum – but this time it is a six-month campaign which will blow itself out. What it has done, of course, is to force people to make choices. That’s what’s called polarisation, divisiveness and all the rest, but it’s true. You can’t go on for ever and ever pretending you’re a socialist party when you’re not, pretending you’ll do something when you won’t, confining yourself to attacks on the Tories when that’s not enough. People want to know what the Labour Party will do and I think this process is long overdue; the Labour Party are having a Turkish bath, and the sweat and the heat and the discomfort are very unpleasant. I am sure Denis will win – I will put that on the record now – because the Party never sacks anybody, and why should it sack its deputy leader, particularly when many people think he should have been the Leader? But I think there will be a sizeable body of opinion which can’t be entirely ignored or neglected.

  Monday 13 April

  Had lunch with Clive Jenkins, and we had a fancy meal – he really is a big-business executive.

  In the course of the meal he said something like, ‘You’re not serious about it, are you?’

  I replied, ‘Of course I am serious about it.’ And I realised immediately that the purpose of the lunch was to persuade me not to stand for the deputy leadership. I said, ‘Clive, the policies may have been agreed at the Conference, but the argument has not been accepted by the Shadow Cabinet or by the TUC General Council.’

  At the end of the lunch he asked if I would like a cup of tea, and on a tray in came the most beautiful loving-cup – a large china cup with two handles and a gold rim – and inscribed on the front in black letters was:

  Elections can be poisoned chalices, Tony

  and on the back:

  Don’t do it, Tony

  I suppose he had thought this would be a consolation if I had agreed not to stand. Later today, I wrote and thanked him for lunch and added, ‘I might need the cup again next year.’

  Wednesday 29 April

  Canvassing for Stephen in the GLC elections, I went to a block of flats, and people were terrified of coming to the door. They just called through the letterbox, ‘What do you want?’ The state of the stairways was awful. One of the people I called on was Christine Keeler, and she looked at me in a funny way, as if she recognised me – not that I’ve ever met her before, I might add.

  Tuesday 5 May

  I wasn’t feeling very well today. I have had this tingling in my legs and now my hands, and my face has been very hot and my skin has been rough, and I did wonder whether I was getting high blood pressure. In the Lobby at about 8,1 asked Maurice Miller, who is MP for East Kilbride and a doctor, if I could consult him professionally. I went into the first-aid room with him and he took my blood pressure, examined my heart and looked at my eyes. He said my blood pressure was on the high side of normal, but he didn’t see anything wrong and said it might be stress and I should take things easier. So, once he had told me there was nothing wrong, I felt much better.

  Thursday 14 May

  I got up early and went to see Dr Stein. I only see him about every five years, and after an hour’s talk with him I feel much better. But I reported the fact that I have got this tingling in my legs. At the moment, walking is like having on wellington boots full of water with a sponge in the feet. I don’t have any feeling in my feet and my hands tingle. I just don’t feel well at all. He examined me, and there’s nothing wrong with my blood pressure or my heart, so he thinks it might be some nerve condition.

  Sunday 17 May

  Hilary rang at 2 to say ‘ASTMS have backed you!’ And so they had, by a very narrow majority of about 650, in a vote of 28,000. So that gave me a huge boost, it is a real kick in the teeth for Clive Jenkins, with his ‘poisoned chalice’.

  Monday 1 June

  Went to see Dr Stein again and he is sending me to see a neurologist at Charing Cross Hospital. I do take it seriously because it is really incapacitating me.

  Joshua took me to County Hall, where there were about 1,000 people from the People’s March for Jobs, sitting in the bright sunshine. I spoke and paid a warm tribute to the Morning Star for their support.

  From 3.30 to 4 I stood outside St Stephen’s entrance to the House, meeting the marchers. Some of them are worried because when the march is over they will be just unemployed people again.

  Wednesday 3 June

  Shadow Cabinet at 5, which was sensational. I didn’t make very full notes but I have got a rough idea of what happened. By 5.20 we had come to ‘any other business’ and Michael said, ‘I want to refer to the fact that, despite the Shadow Cabinet decision to abstain on the defence debate, a Tribune amendment was tabled. Tony Benn signed it, and voted against the Government. I take this as a criticism of me, and it makes a shambles, and I would like to ask him if he has anything to say.’


  I answered, ‘I think it would be more sensible to recognise that there really is here a very big constitutional issue, a conflict between two concepts of collective responsibility: one is the idea that the Shadow Cabinet can have collective responsibility; the other is that the collective responsibility is to the Party and Party policy and Conference policy, and I think that that is the way it should be looked at. As far as collective responsibility itself is concerned, in the House of Commons on 16June 1977 Mrs Thatcher asked Jim Callaghan a question about collective responsibility and he replied, “Yes, I certainly think that the doctrine should apply except in cases where I announce that it does not.” That is really what it is about. It is entirely arbitrary. It is seen as the power of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Party. It has got no constitutional foundation. It isn’t any good saying that this can be left to the Shadow Cabinet to decide whether or not they will do it.’

  Michael said, ‘Well, I now wish to read a statement that I am going to have published. There has been a great deal of suspicion and it is Tony’s fault. There have also been a lot of leaks.’

  I interrupted. ‘May I make one thing absolutely clear. I know people in the Shadow Cabinet don’t like me writing notes but I have never described what has happened in the Shadow Cabinet; and I know that other members of the Shadow Cabinet do. I want it to be absolutely established, whether people believe it or not, that I have never given a briefing on the Shadow Cabinet.’

  Well, Michael then read this 25-page statement which showed he was in an absolute panic. ‘In view of what he has said and done over recent weeks . . . I have told Tony Benn that, in my judgement, his only course now is to stand against me . . .’

  He read it right through, and I won’t repeat it here in full, but it was about how I was questioning his allegiance to Party policy, how the guidelines on collective responsibility were clear – he went through it all. It had obviously been drafted by Denis Healey, Peter Shore, John Silkin and Neil Kinnock. The main emphasis was that I must stand against him as Leader and let the Movement decide.

  When he had finished, I asked, ‘May I comment briefly?’

  He said I could.

  ‘I certainly welcome the suggestion that we have a discussion with the PLP. I welcome many of the policy points that are included in the statement, but I hope you won’t publish it. First of all, it was written before you heard me today, and, secondly, it is very personal and it will confuse people. Two months ago you said I shouldn’t stand against Denis, and now you say I should stand against you. But of course you stood against Denis. I really think it would be inadvisable to publish it.’

  Michael said, ‘On the deputy leadership, I warned you, and I shall make proposals for collective responsibility in the future. It is a question of trust and I have been humiliated.’

  There was a lot of banging on the table by Shadow Cabinet people, and John Silkin looked at me like a cat about to spring on a mouse; the hatred there was unbelievable.

  Went to the Tea Room and showed Dennis Skinner the statement. He said as a joke, ‘Perhaps you should stand against Michael, and John Silkin would beat Denis Healey.’

  I staggered back to listen to the 9 o’clock news. I could hardly walk; I was pulling myself along by both arms in the corridor. It was banner headlines on the news. I rang Frances Morrell, who said, ‘Don’t get into a great argument with Michael, but you must let it be known you are not going to take up his offer.’ So I asked her to ring the Press Association, which she did, and later I confirmed that it was authentic. Then I listened to the 10 o’clock news, which was all about it, but as a matter of fact I had established my position so clearly that I didn’t really have to reply to Michael’s arguments. The only thing was, I did have to say what I would be doing.

  Caroline and I went and had a meal, and I drafted a statement on the following lines. ‘I voted for Michael Foot when he stood for the leadership of the Party against Denis Healey last November. I continue to support him in that role, and there is no question of my standing against him for the leadership. I shall also continue to campaign for the deputy leadership in support of the policies of the Party as agreed at successive Conferences and without any references to personalities. I appeal to the whole Movement to back up those policies.’

  Michael was on ‘The World Tonight’ interviewed by Anthony Howard for twenty-two minutes and it was the most muddled interview. ‘Tony is in a difficulty’, and ‘Lenin said this’ and ‘Trotsky said that’. He sounded like Ramsay MacDonald in his rambling days.

  I gave Chris Moncrieff of the PA my statement, having checked it with one or two people. Mik thought I should say, ‘Unlike most other members of the Shadow Cabinet, I voted for Michael Foot.’ But I thought that was silly.

  When we got home, Hilary and Joshua turned up, and the family are rallying round like anything.

  Thursday 4 June

  I got up at about 4 am. I couldn’t sleep, my legs were hurting, and so I worked for a couple of hours in case they keep me in hospital. Caroline has been looking in the medical dictionary and has found an illness that corresponds to all my symptoms.

  Took Caroline breakfast just as a sort of final gesture, and outside the front door were a couple of camera and radio units and a lot of photographers. Hilary turned up early, went and bought all the papers, and there was a hysterical headline on every one, such as ‘Fight Me Dares Foot’. Hilary put my bags in the car and then drove it round to the front door.

  Hilary drove me to the Charing Cross Hospital and I was taken to see Dr Clifford Rose, who examined me. I hadn’t got reflexes in my legs or arms.

  He told me, ‘I think I know what this is. If this was only a medical consideration, I would recommend you came into hospital at once.’

  I said, ‘Well, I’m perfectly happy to do that because I am simply incapacitated.’

  So I was taken to the tenth floor and put in a single side-room. Hilary and I drafted a statement, which I checked with Dr Clifford Rose, saying that I had been admitted to hospital for tests for a suspected viral infection. The media then descended en masse on the hospital. The security people came and asked what they should do, so I said I wasn’t going to see them.

  I had my little television and I watched the various programmes and the discussion arising out of the Foot proposal, which was the big news story. What I need is a rest. I am not saying that it caused the viral infection, but I have been grossly overdoing it for ages, and a rest now comes at a convenient time because I am not really needed for the campaign. The issues have got across, and if I take a couple of weeks off I can come back whenever I like, provided I’m not thought to be unfit in a major way.

  A Mars Bar from the Tony Benn fan club was delivered by two punks, and flowers and telegrams and letters poured in – including a letter from the Joint Shop Stewards Committee at the hospital asking if I would like to address their meeting on Wednesday, which I will do if I am still here.

  Friday 5 June

  I had all sorts of neurological tests today, and it may be necessary to have a lumbar puncture. Dr Rose was in yesterday morning, then Dr Kapidoo, who is the senior registrar, then Dr Clive Handler, who is the neurologist. Dr Lawrence comes and spends a lot of time getting my medical history and testing my reflexes. The nurses are extremely nice, and all the cleaners are members of NUPE. I received lots of flowers, so I put some in the day room, some in the cleaners’ room, and gave some to the nurses.

  Tony Benn’s illness was eventually diagnosed as Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an attack on the nervous system starting from the feet, which can be fatal. He stayed in hospital from 6–17 June making retrospective notes on 20 June. While he was in Charing Cross hospital, the Sun amongst others attempted by various unscrupulous means to get into his room.

  Saturday 20 June

  On 17 June, our thirty-second wedding anniversary, I was discharged, and Hilary and Caroline arrived; we left to an onslaught of press, television and radio. We came out with Sister Ross a
nd I gave an interview.

  It was so lovely to be home, and Caroline had organised things so that the front room next to the bedroom will be my temporary office, where I can sit and work. When I got back I found Julie with Jon Lansman and Nigel Williamson, who are helping with the campaign. I brought home five sacks of unanswered mail.

  Wednesday 24 June

  I can start working at about 11 in the morning, though I have to rest in the afternoon, and it’s still painful to walk. I’m reading Red Shelley by Paul Foot and am enjoying it very much indeed. The only book I have read about Shelley is Ariel by André Maurois, and that was when I was a student. What Paul Foot has shown beyond doubt is that Shelley was a genuine romantic revolutionary who was a republican, an atheist, a leveller and a feminist, and that he was the great inspiration of the Chartists and the working-class movement until all that was forgotten by poets who managed to suppress the political Shelley and emphasise his more precious poetry. It is a brilliant book, scholarly and very readable, and Paul Foot, whom I have met only once, added a note when he sent it to me: ‘Just to show that not everybody from the Daily Mirror or the Foot family is hostile.’ Very nice of him, and I wrote and thanked him.

  Wednesday 29 July

  Sat and watched the royal wedding on TV. There were perhaps two million people out in London, and this tremendous ceremonial display was watched throughout the world by 750 million people – without any doubt the biggest television audience that had ever seen anything. The image presented to the rest of the world was of a Britain about as socially advanced as France before the French Revolution! We are slipping back to eighteenth-century politics. We’ve got to fight like anything to recover the position that we had even in 1945. I had that feeling most strongly. It was feudal propaganda, turning citizens into subjects.