The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  I followed this up by saying, ‘I suppose Neil will be the first Prime Minister at Number 10 who has never held any ministerial office.’

  He said, ‘No, there was Ramsay MacDonald!’

  It was quite a friendly talk and I think the truth is that Roy Hattersley would like to build up alliances on the Left a bit. In that situation, Hattersley would be easier to deal with than Kinnock, just as Healey would have been easier to deal with than Foot.

  Wednesday 16 May

  I went to the House for a meeting of the PLP.

  There were a number of motions asking for a censure debate on the miners’ dispute and for a £5 levy on MPs towards the miners’ strike. Max Madden, MP for Bradford West, made a brilliant speech, describing how miners and nurses had stood together on the hospital picket lines to try to prevent the closure of Thornton View Hospital, which was in his constituency. He said that in Chesterfield he had met a miner who said, ‘For the first time we are beggars, and we never thought we would be.’ He told us that huge sacrifices were being made, and at the moment a miner’s wife had only £13.85 a week to live on. At his GMC, £80 had been raised, and tinned food was being collected outside supermarkets. He moved a motion for a £5 levy from all Labour MPs. He said he was disappointed at the amendment which had been put against the £5 levy and he hoped those responsible would withdraw it. He stressed, ‘Money is vital, because this will be a long dispute.’

  Willie Hamilton, the MP for Fife, who is a hardline right-winger, gave his credentials: he was the longest-serving member of the PLP and he had always supported miners (the sort of statement that warns you that betrayal is coming). He said there had never been a motion for a levy of Labour MPs before, it was a dangerous precedent, and what would happen if a similar motion was put forward for the nurses, the engineers or the civil servants? The PLP would become a supplementary benefit organisation. ‘This is not the way to help the miners. The Government has got its responsibility, and the Notts miners are good, sound working people. The strike is harming the Party and Thatcher is trying to say that we are responsible.’

  Kinnock declared, ‘I want the miners to win. I agree with Max Madden that there are massive sacrifices being made in the coalfields and the Movement is trying to help. My own constituency has given £500.1 accept also that £5 is not a sacrifice for MPs. The amendment has nothing to do with any objection to the money, but if we levy now we must continue to levy, and we, the Shadow Cabinet, are against it. A levy gives the impression that there is a reluctance to contribute, and if the levy fell below its official sum, there would be a propaganda point for our enemies.’

  Joe Ashton was excellent. He said, ‘We are now attempting to substitute a discussion about payments for a debate on policy. The Shadow Cabinet have been sitting on the fence for ten weeks and have now come up with this amendment against the miners. We have had no policy for ten weeks, and 2,300 miners have been arrested. The police are now in charge of industrial relations. The Labour Party’s gains in the opinion polls have levelled off because we are dithering. What are we scared of? We are just keeping our heads down, and we need leadership from the PLP. We should take the initiative. The strike is about despair. We should support the miners or we will lose.’

  In the end, the motion was carried unanimously. This is the second time within a week that I have witnessed Kinnock withdraw. He did so in the Liverpool case by accepting a meaningless amendment, and he did so in this case by accepting a meaningless concession. It does confirm my view that, if you keep the pressure up, the man will always give way.

  Friday 18 May

  Up at 6.30 for the soup run at 7.30. It was cold and a bit miserable, and I detected a different atmosphere. The miners were unshaven, looked unwell, were probably unfed, and the police were more aggressive. I was told that at one place the police had stood right up against the miners, staring at them and rhythmically beating their truncheons on their gloved hands. It is just very frightening and intimidating.

  I talked to Betty Heathfield about the attempt by the Electricity Board to cut off domestic supplies to the miners, and I wrote some letters to try to prevent it. She told me that the villages of Welbeck and Church Warsop had been virtually occupied by the police. They had put foot patrols on every corner, gone into the houses of striking miners, interrogated the families to find out if they were billeting pickets from Yorkshire, and were evicting those Yorkshire miners, though they had absolutely no right to do so. They were alleged to be ‘investigating intimidation’ by striking miners against working miners. Betty thought the police were trying to break up the Women’s Action Group, because the Barnsley group had been arrested and the police were attacking women pickets.

  Sunday 20 May

  Heard Neil Kinnock on the one o’clock news. His interviews are like processed cheese coming out of a mincing machine – nothing meaty, just one mass of meaningless rhetoric that defuses and anaesthetises the listener. The last thing we want is a row with him because he is still on his honeymoon, but the fact is that the Labour leadership has totally failed to support the working class when in struggle.

  Wednesday 23 May

  NEC, which was nasty at times. At one stage, Dennis Skinner described it as a ‘right-wing mediation committee’.

  Neil Kinnock snarled, ‘You’re mad, you’re mad!’

  I’ve never seen Neil Kinnock lose his cool like that.

  Eric Heffer said, ‘Right, we’ll suspend the meeting for five minutes.’

  Dennis argued, ‘We’ve been voting all night, and the Front Bench sloped off after a deal and left us to hold the fort . . .’ and so on.

  Neil Kinnock shouted, ‘The time’s coming when you’ll have to put up or shut up!’

  I had a reply today from Mrs Thatcher to the fax I had sent her about the use of troops in the miners’ dispute, and the wording she uses, such as ‘no authorisation has been given’, is very different from saying that it isn’t happening – a highly unsatisfactory response. So I think I might possibly keep that alive a bit.

  Friday 25 May

  I had resolved that while Caroline was in America I would do some repairs around the house. I started work at 4 pm and it was an absolute disaster. The first job I attempted was to replace the old lavatory seat, but I couldn’t get the old fittings off, so I banged with the hammer and bust the lavatory bowl, and now the water comes out the back when you flush. The cost of that intervention will be £70 or £80. Then I tried to repair a faulty switch outside the bedroom, but I wasn’t sure what to connect to what, so ended up putting the old broken switch back on. Then I replaced bulbs round the house.

  This morning, Hilary had the whole centre page in Tribune on the Common Market; he is a great authority on Europe.

  Thursday 31 May

  Over the last few days there have been terrible scenes outside the Orgreave Coke Depot, where 7,000 pickets have been attacked by mounted and foot police with riot shields and helmets. It looks like a civil war. You see the police charging with big staves and police dogs chasing miners across fields, then miners respond by throwing stones and trying to drag a telegraph pole across a road; there are burning buildings and roadblocks. It is like looking at scenes from Northern Ireland or Central Europe. Yesterday Arthur Scargill was arrested.

  I was asked to go on ‘The World at One’ to comment on the fact that the Police Federation had suggested that the Coal Board take legal action under the Employment Acts to deal with the miners’ opposition to the pit closures. I agreed to go on, but I said, ‘You will have to give me a couple of minutes to say what I think is happening.’

  They replied, ‘We can’t do that.’

  I told them, ‘If you want me on, I want the opportunity to say what I think is happening in the dispute.’

  They said, ‘Well, you’ll be interviewed.’

  So I had a flaming row with the editor, who said, ‘We can’t make special rules for you.’

  ‘I’m not going to be interviewed and treated as if I was o
n trial for my life and be prevented from saying what I want to say.’ I left it at that.

  Saturday 2 June

  With Tom Vallins to a rally in the village of Ollerton in the North Nottinghamshire coalfield. When we arrived, there were police about every hundred yards walking in pairs up and down the village street. Some 5–6,000 people marched round the town singing ‘I’d rather be a picket than a scab’ to the tune of the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘I’d rather be a hammer than a nail’, and pointing to the houses of miners who were working. It’s such a small community, everybody knows what everybody else is doing.

  We marched to a field outside the Miners’ Welfare Club. Tommy Thompson, Vice-President of the Yorkshire miners, who was extremely clear and direct, described how he had been invited by Stan Thorne, the MP for Preston, to speak at an unemployment meeting alongside Neil Kinnock, but then Stan Thorne had taken Tommy aside and asked him not to speak: ‘You will appreciate, it would be a real embarrassment to Neil Kinnock if you, as a Yorkshire miner, were to speak on the same platform as him.’ Tommy said, ‘My family have done more for the Labour Movement than Neil Kinnock will do until the day he dies.’

  I was presented with a stick carved with a miner’s head, and a miner’s lamp. I was also given a thick plastic file full of statements by Nottinghamshire miners about police arrests and brutality.

  Two women who spoke – miners’ wives – were brilliant, and they told me afterwards that it was the first time they had ever spoken from a platform.

  Thursday 7 June

  Miners had come from all over the country for a mass demonstration in London; a very exciting occasion. It was headed by Arthur Scargill, Mick McGahey, Eric Clarke, Eric Heffer and Jim Mortimer. People were waving and cheering out of the windows as we walked along Farringdon Road. It was a beautiful day, and there must have been 10–20,000 people.

  Outside the Sunday Times offices the SOGAT chapel had their banner on the pavement and were cheering and waving; that was really something for the Sunday Times, We turned down Fleet Street and passed the Daily Express building and the miners shouted out, ‘Lies, lies, lies, lies!’ – that was exciting and long overdue. The miners were in a jolly mood, and some of them were drinking cans of beer and had stripped off to the waist, showing off their tattooed bodies. There were some hostile looks, as you would expect, and large numbers of police. At one stage, when the miners saw the mounted police, they shouted, ‘Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!’ Relations between the miners and police are at rock bottom.

  Just as I was going through the Lobby at 10.15, Dennis Skinner said, ‘Sixty-seven miners are being held in Rochester Row police station as a result of scuffles in Parliament Square. Will you go and see them?’

  So Brian Sedgemore, Tam Dalyell and I drove to the police station, where a group of miners were waiting anxiously outside. We went in and spoke to a man with two pips on his shoulder, a young officer type in his late twenties who was very courteous. He asked us to wait, and while we were waiting, we met a lawyer brought over by the NUM, a woman in her late twenties. She was a most determined woman. She said, ‘These people are being held five to a cell intended for one, they have had no food, have been here six or seven hours, and the situation is really awful.’ We were told that one man of sixty-seven who had a heart condition had been released from the cells because he was suffocating, and another man with migraine had had to be released. Somebody had been struck on the eye by a policeman, and a doctor had said it should be stitched, but nothing had been done.

  The commander of A Division, which covers the whole area, came to see us. He was a rather decayed-looking man in his late forties or early fifties, wearing a peaked cap with a lot of encrusted silver on it.

  We were all taken up to what was obviously the officers’ dining room and the commander sat there with the other officer. I kept my tape recorder running in my bag. I did wonder whether it was entirely proper, but I thought When you’re dealing with the enemy, why not?

  In the course of the discussion I said to the senior officer, ‘I cannot understand, Commander, how it is you allow the police to be used in this way. You are provoking people and you are being used by the Government for political purposes.’

  He said, ‘I can’t comment on that.’

  ‘Well, maybe you can’t, but can you explain why it is that Metropolitan police constables in Derbyshire are waving their £600-a-week pay slips at miners who have got nothing to live on?’

  ‘Well, obviously you can’t justify that,’ he replied.

  Brian Sedgemore, who is a big, tall man, a barrister, made the point that there was no justification whatever for keeping the arrested men for hours without food, for treating them like this, when they were only charged with obstructing the highway, threatening behaviour or obstructing the police, which are pretty minor offences. We heard later that the ventilation in the cells had broken down, and the heat was intolerable.

  Anyway, at about 11.45 we were told they had all been released. We never saw them in the cells, as we had asked, but we did insist upon seeing the cells afterwards. Each cell measured only 7 feet by 6 feet and had a recess across which was a wooden board with a mattress covered in plastic. Even with the door open, you could hardly breathe, and all the ventilation came in through a small plate, just about big enough to provide air for one person, but with a high summer temperature and a broken ventilator it was impossible to breathe. To have been shut up in there with no ventilation must have been a nightmare.

  As we left, the commander said, ‘Goodnight.’ I couldn’t shake him by the hand, and I told him, ‘I shall never forget tonight.’ We went out and talked to the miners outside.

  Having taken all the details and listened to everything that had happened, I went home. I was so upset and angry to think that this is happening in Britain. The police are accountable to nobody. As Tarn, Brian and I parted, we agreed to write a letter to the Home Secretary over the weekend, and we will probably release it to the press.

  Saturday 7 July

  To Chesterfield. Went over to the club and there was Peter Heathfield, so I asked him about the talks being held between the Coal Board and the NUM, I must say Peter is marvellous; he’s got a tremendous sense of humour, and he looked tanned and cheerful. He said the talks had gone well from the point of view of the NUM. Ian MacGregor, the Chairman, was trying to be friendly, but after nine hours he had begun to get a bit knackered. He said Jim Cowan, the Deputy Chairman of the Coal Board, was taking a hard line, although that may have been their strategy. Ned Smith, the industrial relations director, was probably less rigid. The three of them – Peter Heathfield, Arthur and Mick McGahey – are working extremely well together. Arthur is totally unyielding and is a field commander; Peter is a negotiator, a diplomat; and Mick McGahey is a straightforward old statesman. They are a fantastic team and totally united. The Coal Board and the NUM have agreed that there’s no problem with closures of pits on the grounds of exhaustion or geological faults, but they are trying to find a new definition of ‘uneconomic pits’, a term which the NUM are not prepared to accept.

  I said, ‘What about suggesting to them that the finance for “uneconomic pits” should come from nuclear power?’

  Peter said, ‘MacGregor might agree, but that’s a different matter.’

  ‘Well, bring in the Government.’

  ‘We don’t want to involve the Government,’ said Peter.

  ‘Couldn’t you suggest that the “uneconomic” coal be given to pensioners?’ I asked.

  ‘MacGregor would say that had nothing to do with it.’

  It became absolutely clear – and this is what I wanted to hear – that the NUM are not going to give MacGregor an agreement. They are not going to let him come out of it with any credit.

  Peter said MacGregor was trying to be very friendly and saying, in his Canadian accent, ‘Come on, Arthur’ and ‘Peter, you must come fishing with me in Scotland’ and ‘What about a game of golf, Mick?’ McGahey, in his Scotti
sh brogue, had replied, ‘I’ve never played golf in my life; it’s a total waste of time!’ It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall. MacGregor had said to Arthur, ‘Now, Arthur, I’ve got my audience to consider and you’ve got your audience to consider, but the important one is the third audience, the people not directly involved.’ The fact is that the miners now think they are winning.

  Peter was prepared to say a great deal in confidence. The morale of the miners is fantastic, the money is coming in and they can manage. He thought the strike wouldn’t finish until the end of August or the beginning of September, another eight weeks.

  Sunday 15 July

  Alan Meale rang to tell me about the Durham Miners’ Gala yesterday. Apparently 100,000 people were there; Dennis Skinner made a brilliant speech which got a standing ovation, but, when Neil Kinnock got up to speak, three bands started playing and moving off the field, and about 85,000 people with twelve banners just began moving away. All Neil did was to attack the Tories – he didn’t give support for the miners.

  Thursday 2 August

  Lawson’s comment that the miners’ strike was a worthwhile investment was followed by the statement that if he had wanted a strike in 1981 he could have had one – which proves that he wasn’t ready then and is ready now. The Prime Minister was on radio and television today saying that she thought the strike had gone on too long; I think they are worried.

  Thirty-six years ago today I met Caroline. She put on the very same dress she wore that day and it fitted her perfectly. She looked lovely in it, and it is fantastic that we should have had thirty-six years together. We went out for a meal.

  Tuesday 14 August

  I do get the feeling that the strike is building up to a real crisis, particularly when you get accounts of incidents like a policeman threatening to stick a man’s darts up his nose, stories of the police being drunk and breaking cars. They are completely out of control. Went on to Warsop, where I heard that at 3 am the police had got out of their vans with their riot shields and walked in front of cottages, banging their batons rhythmically, frightening people.