Read The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 Online
Authors: Tony Benn
‘Not under me,’ he said.
I saw Harold tonight wandering round the House and he has absolutely shrunk; it shows that office is something that builds up a man only if he is somebody in his own right. And Wilson isn’t.
Tuesday 13 April
Jim’s first Cabinet. The order of seating was changed. Jim opened by saying, ‘I would like to thank formally the retiring members – Barbara Castle, Willie Ross, Ted Short, and Bob Mellish. I would like to welcome the new members. I have changed the seating and perhaps you ought to look where everybody is. I hope you will look at my Minute on Procedure very carefully and ensure that your junior Ministers get it.’
When Foreign Affairs came up, Tony Crosland just said, ‘Nil.’ His idea of being clever is to pretend there is nothing that should be brought to the Cabinet. He once boasted he had had no debates in the Cabinet about Education, but he’s not going to get away with it on Foreign Affairs.
In a moment of undue goodwill today, I decided to send a letter to Jim with my book of speeches, so I wrote him a note in my own hand saying:
Dear Jim,
This is strictly for your bookshelf and not for the Prime Ministerial reading list. These speeches chart a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress which may be a better guide to what your Secretary of State for Energy really thinks than can be gleaned from Lobby or Whitehall gossip. It comes inscribed with genuine affection and respect, deepened by your personal kindness over these last few days and combined with heartfelt good wishes.
Yours, Tony
I inscribed the book, ‘To Jim, with affection and respect, Tony Benn.’
Wednesday 21 April
A box was delivered this evening and there were one or two interesting things in it, including a most friendly note from Jim.
My Dear Tony,
I did appreciate your letter and the inscription in your book.
And I want to say your good wishes are totally reciprocated – and don’t let either of us believe all we read about the other in the newspapers!
Audrey has brought the speeches to the farm to read this weekend – despite my remonstrations!
Let us meet after Easter and have a talk about the way you see things
going, not just in your department but more generally in the Party. Please ring my office.
Yours ever,
Jim C.
I haven’t had a letter like that from Harold Wilson in the whole of my life, and it really helps.
Thursday 29 April
Quite a day! At 7 the doorbell rang and it was a journalist. Then when the papers arrived, the
Daily Telegraph
had a headline, ‘Benn Set on Collision Course’. This referred to my abstaining at the NEC on a motion of censure attacking the public-expenditure cuts instead of voting against the motion. The
Daily Express
had a huge banner headline, ‘Benn Rats on the Cabinet’, and I must admit it worried me because I thought it was an awful start with Jim, with whom I was establishing a good relationship.
On the way to Cabinet I asked Crosland how he was enjoying the Foreign Office and he said it was boring, which is typical of Tony. I said, ‘I presume you are thinking about nothing but the Treasury.’
I had a message from the PM’s office that he wanted to see me this afternoon so I went into Jim’s office and he said, ‘I had a question in the House today about collective responsibility and I gave the only answer I could, that collective responsibility includes all Ministers, who must be expected to defend government decisions at all times. I don’t want to be emotional but we can’t have this. If somebody wants to take over this job and do it better than me, I am happy to give up but while I am in, you’ve either got to be with the National Executive or the Government. You may have to choose. There are five Ministers who are also on the Executive and I think we should meet.’
‘That’s fine. I’ll write a paper for it if you like,’ I told him.
‘No, don’t do that. It must be absolutely secret.’
So Fred Mulley, Shirley Williams, Jim Callaghan, Michael Foot and I are going to meet for a discussion and I think that’s very important.
I commented, ‘There were more Ministers on the Executive at one time.’
‘Yes, well, some went, some Harold got rid of, and I had to end Barbara’s career. Harold used to keep a big majority in order to have a tame vote there and I haven’t got it now.’
‘I know, but I think we had better discuss it because I don’t like hearing the Executive attacking the Government, or the Cabinet speaking with contempt about the Executive. Actually, I think the NEC wants to make a go of it.’
Jim said, ‘I don’t know. There are certainly three of them in continual contact with Communists. It’s not “reds under the bed” or that sort of stuff’
(which of course it was) ‘but I know that everything that goes on in that Executive goes straight back to King Street. I have ways of knowing.’
‘I suppose as Home Secretary you know how these things work, but I don’t actually see it that way.’ I presume he was saying that the telephones at the Communist Party HQ are tapped.
Then he said, ‘You have got to accept our policy. You have a lot of ability. You are a young man.’
‘I’m not a young man,’ I said. ‘I’m fifty-one. I’ve been here twenty-six years and the NEC wants to make a go of it. But I appreciate the way you have handled the situation, the problem created by my views.’
Monday 10 May
The big news is that Norman Scott, that awful male model, has finally succeeded in dislodging Jeremy Thorpe, who resigned today as Leader of the Liberal Party. It is terribly sad for Jeremy. Maybe this is a great victory for the South African security police, against whom Harold Wilson railed again yesterday. It makes you wonder whether he is the next one for some scandal of a financial kind, linked to the burglary of his papers. Very strange, I must say. I still can’t understand why he has gone.
Sunday 23 May
The scandal of Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list is still exercising the press. The whole thing is utterly corrupt. What we need at the moment is a great attack on the power of patronage that is given to the Prime Minister. It is much too much for any one man to have. We would never give a king the power to do all that a Prime Minister can do – far more than an American President, and far more than is desirable.
Monday 24 May
Had dinner with Frances and Judith and we talked about how to deal with Thatcher’s argument, which is that the Labour Government are doing to the trade union movement what the Tories could never do; that in doing it the Labour Government are getting profits up and holding prices down and therefore restoring vitality to the capitalist mechanism; and that by doing so they will disillusion their own supporters and make it possible for the Tories to return. Hence when the Tories do return they will find the Labour Movement broken and divided and demoralised, with capitalism booming.
Thursday 27 May
Harold Wilson’s honours list is still the big news item today. It is unsavoury, disreputable and just told the whole Wilson story in a single episode. That he should pick inadequate, buccaneering, sharp shysters for his honours was disgusting. It has always been a grubby scheme but the Establishment never reveal the grubbiness of their own peerages and honours. Still, we’ve never
had anything quite like this in the Labour Party and it has caused an outcry. It will clearly help to get rid of the honours system.
To Locket’s for lunch with Roy Hattersley. We had sort of committed ourselves to having a meal together and I enjoyed it. He is an attractive guy and we talked about Tony Crosland and Jim; he prefers Tony. He thought Tony trusted him more whereas Jim wanted to run everything himself. He found Crosland amusing and civilised and of all the people in the Labour Party, Crosland was the one whose views he shared most completely.
I said how pleasant life was without Harold and Roy said, ‘Yes, but it is an appallingly pedestrian government under Jim.’ He described the junior Ministers’ meeting on Monday. ‘Of course,’ said Roy, ‘I take the view, as you know, that freedom is what matters. I’ve never been a member of any group.’ I pursued that with him and we talked about education. He takes an absolutely hard line about banning all private education. On health, he’s in favour of banning any private health provisions because it will destroy the Health Service. I said from these issues which he cared passionately about – and I didn’t blame him – it could be inferred that he
wasn’t
in favour of freedom. He said he knew that, but we had to carry out these policies.
Roy also said that when he had stayed in the Shadow Cabinet in 1972 after Roy Jenkins and David Owen had resigned, all his friends had cut him off – Bill Rodgers, David, John Harris – and he was absolutely isolated and pilloried and was always described as ‘that rat’ by Bernard Levin.
It was a very enjoyable talk.
Thursday 3 June
Jack Rampton came in and told me that Sir John Hill wanted to see me today to tell me he wanted to cancel the steam-generated heavy-water reactor. An absolute bombshell. So Hill and Walter Marshall came to see me, with Chris Herzig, Rampton and Alan Phillips present. John Hill sat looking shifty, watching Rampton most of the time, and said, ‘I have been in Russia and in Finland [or Sweden] and I’ve been thinking; I have come to the conclusion that we should cancel the SGHWR.’ He then gave all sorts of reasons – it was expensive, there was a small market, the customer didn’t want it, the American light-water reactor (PWR) had been proved safe – and it turned out that he wanted the development of the fast breeder to be accelerated.
I let him finish and then I asked, ‘What view did you take two years ago?’
‘I was in favour of the advanced gas-cooled reactor,’ he said. ‘The customer has to decide.’ He couldn’t really give me a clear answer.
So I asked Walter Marshall what his view was two years ago. He said, ‘I had only just joined the board. I didn’t know much about it but I had doubts.’
I think there is now a plot to kill it off. They see it slipping, costs escalating, they want to save money and get on with the fast breeder without delay.
I said, ‘This news is tremendously important. It’s the AEA deserting its own child. We developed the Magnox and the AGR ourselves and we are proud of it. This will come as a real shock. Moreover, it is bound to throw doubt on the fast breeder because if you are not going to build the system, the SGHWR, which you designed, people will say, Why not buy the fast breeder from abroad?’
As a matter of fact, I am not sorry. I personally don’t want the SGHWR but I shall fight like a tiger against the American light-water reactor.
Marshall was very uncomfortable, even though for him it was a triumph. Rampton was looking quizzical because he never liked the SGHWR. I think they all reckon on my going quickly and then they’ll get the American reactor. But I’ll be absolutely opposed to that and I might have some influence over the decision wherever I am in Whitehall.
Tuesday 8 June
Didn’t get to bed until 4 am, up at 7.30 and another all-night sitting tonight. I brought my car in so Ron Vaughan doesn’t have to wait up again.
Wednesday 9 June
Had lunch at the Foreign Office with Tony Crosland. He was in that great room overlooking the park. Anyone working there would be quite paralysed and incapable of challenging the existing authority in any way. He had his jacket off and was in his blue and white striped shirt with his shoes off, his specs on his nose and a cigar. For him, informality is a sort of substitute for radicalism and it amuses him. He brought with him to the Foreign Office his diary secretary from the Department of the Environment and she obviously acts as his personal friend. I took some photographs of him. He is enjoying it enormously though he says it is a bore having to go abroad so much.
We gossiped about Roy Hattersley. Tony said that although Roy was very able, he was unsuccessful politically because he angered people. He had angered the Jenkinsites and the Left and generally speaking had isolated himself. Tony does love gossip – mind you, so do we all.
Friday 11 June
We had an amusing lunch in the State Drawing Room. Peter said that in 1968, presumably when he was Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, he had attended a dinner at the Royal Academy and sat next to Mrs Thatcher when she was Opposition spokesman on Economic Affairs, and he had tried very hard and very non-politically to get on with her (he said she was the most unpleasant woman he had ever met) but she had an absolute thrusting ambition and reflected the most odious values, of everyone doing well for themselves. Shirley Williams recalled sitting next to Ted Heath at a dinner and when she tried to speak to him, he declined to answer – simply didn’t reply. She had turned to the man on her left and asked, ‘Does Ted Heath not
speak to women?’ and he had answered, ‘He doesn’t speak to many people at all.’
Shirley thought Mrs Thatcher would be out by the end of the year, that the Tories simply would not accept her. That is interesting, but I find it difficult to imagine.
Tuesday 15 June
At 3 we had a meeting on the fast breeder – Arthur Hawkins and Robert Peddie of the CEGB, Frank Tombs of the South of Scotland Electricity Board, Peter Menzies, Brian Tucker, Alex Eadie and Rampton. I began by saying. ‘I am committed to looking at this again and there are a lot of general questions – safety, time scale, methods. Will you give me your comments?’
They told me that the fast breeder just wasn’t safe. I think the phrase was that it was in some way ‘physically unstable’.
‘You mean because of the problem of the China syndrome?’
‘Yes,’ they said. ‘The core might melt through the container and go right through the earth.’
‘Well, if it’s unstable at present, what about the reactor at Dounreay?’ I asked.
Peddie said, ‘Don’t ask me about safety at Dounreay,’ and everybody laughed.
I said, ‘I have to ask.’
They told me that in fact the AEA have different safety standards to the Nuclear Inspectorate because they are doing research and development. I suppose the plain truth is that Dounreay isn’t safe and that’s why it was originally situated there.