The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (81 page)

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, with 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 said, ‘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.’

Jim went on to say that Thatcher was moving further and further to the right and it was something we hadn’t seen before in a Tory leader, but that left us to occupy the centre ground.

‘There are other factors here that we have got to take seriously,’ Peter Shore argued. ‘Mrs Thatcher is beginning to reflect a genuine English nationalist feeling, a deep feeling about the English and how they see themselves in terms of their own history.’

I said, ‘What she is doing is long-range shelling deep behind our lines, attacking things we had assumed were already part of the consensus. There is a danger she will be political and we will be managerial, so I welcome what the Prime Minister has said about speeches being broader.’

Roy Mason commented, ‘Thatcher is deliberately highlighting the security of the state, and stimulating fear, with talk of hooligans, rearmament, defence, and more money for law and order.’

From that little discussion I had a deep feeling of anxiety that we were being told we would have to move towards Mrs Thatcher on these issues.

We adjourned for lunch at 1, and as we left the room Sir John Hunt thanked me for sending my paper ‘Accountability in Labour Politics’. ‘I read it with great interest and I would like to talk to you about it.’

I said, ‘Of course, it was written very much with you in mind because it’s up your street.’

He gave me an impenetrable look. I’m glad I sent it to him. I don’t want anyone to think I’m doing it under cover.

To sum up the day, there was a lot of goodwill but I feel isolated because I am in a minority. Jim is avuncular, calm, quiet, a Herbert Morrison type, always with an eye for what the man in the street will think and without much time for the rank and file of the Party.

Wednesday 1 March

Dashed over to the weekly PLP meeting and I’m glad I did because I heard about forty minutes of the debate on reselection of MPs.

Joe Ashton said he wanted to be practical; a local Party general management committee must be able to sack an MP – that was what democracy was about – but we must get it right, otherwise we could have twenty-five deselected Reg Prentices and it would be impossible for the Parliamentary Party to discipline them for the remainder of the Parliament.