The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (82 page)

Then came one of the most remarkable speeches I have ever heard in my twenty-eight years in Parliament. John Golding, who is a real tough cookie, got up and said, ‘I was adopted as a candidate because I could organise the selection conference via the union. I got forty-six votes: it was a disappointment because fifty votes had been promised to me and I lost four votes in the course of the selection conference. I could hold that seat by organising the GMC any time I like, by packing the delegates in. I have organised more selection conferences, and seen how they are packed, than anyone in this room excepting Ron Hayward and Reg Underhill. The ideal method of selection under which people are chosen by the GMC is pure cotton wool. It doesn’t happen like that at all.

‘Now, if we choose to reselect MPs, it will be a traumatic experience because we shall start packing GMCs to see that our people get in. The Party would take two years to recover and it would be disastrous. The Parliamentary Party is already divided into factions and we must not translate that situation into the constituency Parties.’

He added, ‘I protect the trade union seats from the media men, from lecturers and lawyers, and if reselection is to take place it must be reselection by
all
the members of the Party.’ Well, by this time people at the meeting
were laughing at this extraordinary declaration of truth by a right-wing organiser. If it had been a left-winger who said this – Eric Heffer or Neil Kinnock or worst of all Andy Bevan – the place would have been in uproar. But the cynicism was such that the Party just took it. Michael Cocks said, ‘He’s right, you know, that’s what actually happens.’ I felt utterly sick.

Bob Cryer said, ‘As a point of order, I hope that speech is not reported.’

Audrey Wise spoke next, and in a typically democratic way she said she very much regretted that Labour Party members
couldn’t
hear that speech. It is indeed
because
you can pack one selection conference that reselection is necessary.

I had to leave then, but I am awfully glad I went. It was the talk of the day.

Monday 6 March

At the Home Policy Committee, which wasn’t terribly exciting, we agreed in principle that the Party should commit itself to opposing blood sports; we will also look at factory farming, the protection of the environment, vivisection and cruelty to animals.

Tuesday 14 March

As I was sitting outside the Cabinet Room waiting for a meeting Jim came up. He was very agitated about something. He heard me cough and said, ‘Nothing trivial I hope.’

Over lunch Frances gave me a great lecture and made a list of my strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses, she said, were that I was thought to be fanatical and humourless, and that I was building on too narrow a base in the Party. She advised me, ‘You must be more human and more relaxed. And you must go for more support in the PLP and TUC General Council.’

Wednesday 22 March

At 9 I had my first meeting with Ian Gillis, my new Chief Information Officer, who is replacing Bernard Ingham. I miss Bernard.

Saturday 25 March

I’m reading E.P. Thompson’s
William Morris,
which is a marvellous book. It gives me an insight into his relationship to the Romantic poets of the 1830s, influenced by the French Revolution. I found it a little difficult understanding the link between the Romantic movement and the Pre-Raphaelites, but I was more familiar with William Morris and the Social Democratic Federation. He opposed the parliamentary socialists in the first instance and was contemptuous of the Fabians.

Monday 10 April

Organisational Sub-Committee at 3.30. There was a long discussion about the National Front. Frank Allaun believed they should be banned from TV
and schools, and should be treated as pariahs. I said it wasn’t their appearance on TV that gave them publicity so much as the press. You couldn’t stop TV covering their meetings during the Election, and I thought it was better to argue it out.

Frank and I don’t see eye to eye on this. I can understand his point. He thinks that, if Hitler had been crushed early on, the holocaust would never have happened.

I take a rather old-fashioned liberal view, but I didn’t win. Advice is to be given to local candidates and I think I shall be able to justify whatever the Party decides.

Snow fell today. Unbelievable. It isn’t quite frozen but it is very cold and the trees are bending with the lovely snow on their boughs. Caroline went out after midnight and I took a photograph of her with my polaroid against the white background.

Saturday 29 April

Caught the 88 bus to Trafalgar Square for the Friends of the Earth Windscale demonstration. There were about 10,000 people, mostly young, and it reminded me of the CND marches, with a combination of right-wing and rather prim ecological people and left-wing commune types with beards and babies.

I climbed up the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields and sat on my portable seat facing the square. There was a group playing and then the speeches began. I couldn’t hear very well so I went round and took a few pictures.

Friends of the Earth are not politically strong enough to stop nuclear power but they are hoping to check the mad rush towards the fast breeder, and I think that’s an extremely powerful counter-pressure to have.

The 6 o’clock hews reported Arthur Scargill’s call for civil disobedience to stop Windscale, and Caroline remarked that he was really a general in the field – indeed, she had seen him recently in a television interview with General Clutterbuck talking about the army’s role in civil disturbances, Clutterbuck having written on the subject.

Anyway Arthur came to dinner at 7 with his wife Anne, and some sympathetic journalists. Stephen looked in momentarily.

Arthur told me it was rumoured that I was there in the crowd, but I couldn’t possibly have spoken because I am the Minister responsible for Windscale.

Throughout the evening, Arthur talked most of the time. He is about thirty-eight, a remarkable leader, tough, perky, amusing, with lots of personality, a marvellous mimic of all sorts of accents.

Arthur thought that, if we lost the Election, I would become Leader of the Party.

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said, ‘because a lot of left-wing MPs would be defeated and the PLP could drift back to the right. Also the trade union leaders would
have to work with the new Government and wouldn’t want a critical left-wing Labour Party which might embarrass them in front of their own rank and file.’

‘The miners would support you,’ said Arthur.

Saturday 6 May

Melissa is in bed with flu. Rosalind came out of hospital; she has a growth in her lung but it’s not clear yet what it is.

Saturday 20 May

The doctors opened up Rosalind yesterday and found that the growth had developed so much that they just closed her up again. Most of the morning was spent on the phone to Hilary, who has been fantastically courageous. Rosalind’s parents, Peter and Lesley Retey, were obviously very distressed.

I rang Liz Shore, who gave me some information, then Hilary arrived. As soon as he saw me his face crumpled in tears – he towers over me now – and I comforted him. I can hardly bear thinking about it.

Monday 22 May

At 10.15 I had a word about Rosalind with Dick Mabon, who was a physician. He said, ‘You must get a second opinion, find out what the chances are, and how long she has. You must find out how much pain is involved because if she is going to have a long treatment she might not be able to take painkillers – that could be agony for her and it might be better not to try to prolong it.’

I did tell my driver, Ron Vaughan, about it and he said, ‘It’s turned summer into winter’, which I thought was touching.

Saturday 3 June

Rosalind is not at all well and Caroline was distressed about it. Hilary is marvellous – in a way too strong. Joshua is staying with him, which is a great comfort.

I sat downstairs in my office trying to work and I found myself sobbing at the thought of that young couple being broken up by illness, and of all the agonies to come to her and Hilary.

Friday 9 June

A visit to Windscale with Caroline.

Windscale was originally an army ordnance factory called Sellafield before the war, and after the war it was used to develop our nuclear weapons programme and its name was changed to Windscale. John Hill, who was present today, reminded me that he worked there in 1950, probably at the beginning of the civil programme. There is still a military operation there.
They store spent fuel elements from nuclear-powered submarines and process the plutonium that’s needed for the country’s hydrogen bombs.

We were greeted by John Hill, Con Allday (Managing Director of BNFL) and others. We had coffee and then went round together.

We toured the oxide storage ponds, and I must say they are very mysterious, those deep indoor swimming pools with their dark green water. They are lit up underneath and you can dimly see these fuel elements that are used in nuclear power stations, vaguely threatening, though the water is apparently a complete shield against any radioactivity that gets out.

Then we went to the chemical separation plant, where they break the fuel elements down into depleted uranium, plutonium (which is the most deadly substance of all) and highly toxic waste. They showed us what they called the Harvest demonstration rig where they take these highly toxic wastes, which have been evaporated down to about a tenth of their volume, and mix them with ground glass, put them in a furnace and fuse them into a glass bottle which permits the heat but not the radioactivity to be released. This is placed in a metal flask and left to cool for twenty years, when they believe it will be ready to put in geological formations.

From a roof we had an immensely impressive view of the site. I remembered John Hill telling me last year that in the early days they didn’t really understand what they were handling and the whole site was soaked in radioactive toxic wastes.

I comment on this because when you see this vast complex you are struck, on the one hand, by the skill and scientific knowledge of the people who run it and, on the other, by the exceptional vulnerability of such a complicated system. Nobody can truthfully say that this whole project can be handed over to future generations to look after safely when they’ve no idea whether future generations will be faced with invasion, earthquakes, floods, strikes or plagues. It is a tremendously risky thing to do, and the duration of the risk, 10,000 or 15,000 years, is enormous.

We were taken downstairs along a corridor, and it was something like the vaults of the Bank of England. There was a door about two feet thick and inside that another door with circular panels either side, each padlocked, through which the plutonium was placed and stored.

The whole thing is electronically monitored of course, and it would be impossible for terrorists to get through the door and into the safe and then remove the plutonium – although there’s no question whatever that, if the country was invaded, a hostile scientific team could get the plutonium out in a jiffy.

Two years ago I had to introduce legislation to arm the AEA guards, but in fact I think there are military forces there, out of view, protecting the military establishment.

We went back and talked to the employee representatives – the staff and unions. They raised the Windscale planning inquiry and were in fact now
persuaded that it had been well handled. The debate was broadcast in full last month from Parliament, and many of them had listened to it. It had given them the feeling that the work they do was explicitly endorsed by Parliament.

Lunch was a tremendous buffet with prawn cocktail and a decorated salmon, and turkey and strawberries and cream.

Drove to Newcastle across Cumbria and Northumberland. It’s an area I’d never been to in my life, full of Roman forts and a bit of Hadrian’s Wall. Arrived at the Park Hotel in Tynemouth for the NUM dinner.

Saturday 10 June

Came back on the train. Caroline and Judith Hart went to dinner in the dining car, and Caroline told me afterwards that at their table was another diner who had been shooting a bit of a line about the wine, complaining and generally showing off to them.

At one point I walked up to the buffet, not seeing Caroline. As I went by, the man had apparently said, ‘Who’s let that bloody twit on the train?’ (I hadn’t heard this.)

Caroline had replied, ‘That’s my husband’, and for the rest of the meal he hadn’t said a word.

Sunday 18 June

Went to visit Rosalind. We hadn’t seen her for a week and she looked paler and thinner. She had that slightly translucent skin tone which is the sign of a sick person. But her eyes were bright and she smiled.

I heard today that the Top Salaries Review Body chaired by Lord Boyle has come up with proposals for increases of 30 per cent for senior civil servants, chairmen of nationalised industries, senior forces officers and all the rest That will mean another £8,000 for Permanent Secretaries. It’s unbelievable, and obviously causing a great deal of embarrassment.

Wednesday 21 June

Brian Sedgemore, Frances and Francis and Michael Meacher came to lunch. To be perfectly candid it was a leadership planning meeting. Michael offered to draw up a list of people from the PLP who might be prepared to vote for me as Leader in the event of Jim leaving. He said we should start work on it now. Michael is very devoted and willing to do a lot of work on this. Obviously I found it encouraging.

Sunday 16 July

Chris Mullin came to see me. He is about thirty, fought North Devon in 1970, works for the BBC and writes for
Tribune
. Anne McDermid, my literary agent, has persuaded him to turn my speeches into a book. I liked him. He’s just written a book called
The Manifesto of an Extremist
in which he
discusses various themes – the press, the Cold War, and so on. It’s an arresting title, but it may do him some damage.

Thursday 20 July