The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (84 page)

He pointed out that, in respect of West German telephone-tapping, the European Court of Human Rights had not ruled that this was an infringement of human rights, and he mentioned that the Machinery of Government Committee of the NEC had not suggested that these matters should be covered by a Freedom of Information Act.

I should add that Merlyn mentioned that he had sent copies of the correspondence to the Prime Minister.

I came home and wrote an eight-page memorandum on the security services and the case for an inquiry.

Tonight, addressing the Tory Party Conference, Ted Heath pledged his full support to Jim Callaghan on pay. That can’t be right.

Monday 16 October

A new Pope was elected today – Cardinal Wojtyla from Cracow. He’s taken the title of Pope John Paul II and he is the first non-Italian Pope since 1522, so it’s quite an event. He was in a German POW camp or concentration camp. I think he’s a good choice.

Wednesday 25 October

Lunch with Frances, Geoff Bish, Francis, Michael Meacher and Bryan Gould. Frances Morrell and Brian Sedgemore think I should be quiet now and just drift into the leadership of the Party by doing nothing. That may be the right tactic, but I just feel we are fighting a battle and I am impatient to be in it. They don’t understand my attitude on this. We analysed Jim’s views on the EMS and drew some interesting conclusions as to what he must be thinking: that Britain was ungovernable and therefore we needed a federal European government; that there was great political value in being associated with Schmidt; that there would be a fear of a run on the pound before the Election. He didn’t really have any faith in the pay policy, so international monetarist disciplines would be the best way of holding the unions in check.

At 5 I, went to see Jim alone in the Cabinet Room about my paper on reform of the security services, which I had put to the Home Policy Committee.

He said, ‘On this business of the security services. Why did you ask whether you were tapped?’

I told him about the delay in Merlyn’s reply to my note.

‘That’s because it came to me,’ he said.

‘It’s a serious issue, Jim.’

‘It is all under ministerial control,’ he replied. ‘We hardly bug anybody. Incidentally, your telephone isn’t tapped.’

‘I didn’t say it was. But my son picked up my voice on the radio the other day, and my daughter made a call and heard a recording of what I had just said.’

‘It’s all under control,’ he repeated.

‘But how do we know that?’

‘Look,’ Jim replied, ‘there must be an element of trust on this.’

I assured him I wasn’t suggesting that I distrusted him, but you had no idea what the secret services were up to.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have just changed the heads of MI5 and MI6, as a matter of fact. I have appointed Sir Howard Smith as head of MI5, and I have known him for years.’

‘So have I.’

Jim told me that Howard Smith had just come back from our embassy in Moscow, and Jim had informed him, ‘Say goodbye to Gromyko – tell him you’re coming back to take charge of MI5.’

‘Well, if the Russians can know who the head of MI5 is, why can’t it be published here?’ I asked.

‘He might be a target,’ Jim said,’ an IRA target.’

‘Lots of people are targets.’

He didn’t tell me who the head of MI6 was, so I said, ‘I heard from an American, who was on President Carter’s Commission, that a man called Sir Leonard Hooper was head of MI6. These names ought to be known.’

‘Just makes them targets for the IRA,’ Jim muttered. ‘The whole thing is under control.’

‘Well, you say that, Jim, but I heard of a WEA course on William Morris, in Wales, where the police wanted to find out who had enrolled because they thought that Morris was a Marxist.’

‘Well, let me give
you
an example,’ Jim replied. ‘Two MPs went to some Anti-Apartheid meetings and they complained to me that they had been followed by plainclothes men. I’ll tell you why the men were there – to keep an eye on BOSS, the South African secret service, and to find out which meetings they were attending.’

I didn’t say, but I found that hard to believe because Special Branch and MI5 work together with BOSS.

‘Let me give you another example,’ I said. ‘Harold Wilson, in my presence, told the CBI at a dinner in March 1971 that the TUC were bugged. I didn’t learn
that
as a Minister.’

‘Oh, Harold is just a Walter Mitty. Once, in his study upstairs, he turned round the picture of Gladstone and there was a hole in the wall. He called Ken Stowe in and put his hands to his lips and said, “Shhh!”, pointing to the hole. He’s just a Walter Mitty.’

‘Well, maybe, but the
Pencourt File
stated that he thought he was being bugged; and Chapman Pincher was certain Wilson was bugged.’

‘Pincher’s links with the services ended five years ago,’ said Jim.

‘Well, he has just published a book,
Inside Story
, saying that five members of the Cabinet are Communists and one is in touch with Moscow. Presumably he thinks it’s Michael Foot.’

‘Oh, that’s all stopped. Chapman Pincher has nothing to do with the security services now.’

I reminded Jim of my efforts to appoint Jack Jones to the NEB, and that I was told he was a security risk, at a time when he was carrying the whole Government on his shoulders. I was told I couldn’t have Hugh Scanlon on the British Gas Corporation because we needed somebody who was loyal to the country. How did we know security was under control?

‘It is. And your telephone isn’t tapped.’

‘How many telephones
are
tapped?’

‘139,’ he replied, ‘and each one has to be authorised by the Home Secretary on a warrant. Every three months the Permanent Secretary and
the Home Secretary go over the list and discuss whether or not to continue tapping individual numbers. Not even all the foreign embassies are tapped.’

‘Well, the POEU are of the opinion that between 1,000 and 2,000 phones in London alone are tapped.’

‘That is not so,’ said Jim. ‘It has got to be a question of trust.’

‘But a lot of people are worried, and I think we ought to have an inquiry.’

Jim said, ‘I am not making available anything that is secret.’

‘I didn’t expect you would, but we should get some high-powered people to look at it and put some guidelines down. The Solicitor-General supports me on this.’

‘He knows nothing about security.’

‘Nobody does,’ I said; ‘that is the whole point.’

Jim continued, ‘Now, on this freedom-of-information business. There’s a committee looking at it – GEN 29.’

I replied, ‘Yes, I read that in the papers too.’

‘Would you like to be put on the committee?’

I said yes, so I was put on it.

I think Jim was sorry he’d blown up at me on Monday and I told him I understood; we were all under great strain. He admitted to having a very low boiling point.

I had the impression that he wanted to find out what I knew about the security services. I said I wasn’t being paranoid; there was a big civil liberties issue here, and had been for many years. I was an old-fashioned radical liberal and I didn’t believe in all this secrecy. He remarked that if I started inquiries I’d only drive the intelligence service underground. Well, that was rich, given that they were already underground.

Friday 3 November

The Ford workers voted overwhelmingly today against the Ford pay offer. The BBC television coverage deliberately created the impression that motor car workers are dangerous and violent, while the BBC is the voice of rationality. It is disgusting.

Thursday 16 November

Jim Callaghan had some of his grandchildren in the Cabinet Room before Cabinet began and some photographs were taken. I must say the Cabinet gets more and more like the royal family.

John Silkin was congratulated on his recovery after being knocked down by a moped, and John Smith was welcomed as the new Secretary of State for Trade in Edmund Dell’s place.

Tuesday 21 November

The papers are full of the Jeremy Thorpe case. On the face of it, it would appear that he had a homosexual relationship with Scott – though that is no
longer a crime – and that there was a plot to incite people to murder Scott. It’s tragic for Jeremy.

I wrote today to the Redgraves, enclosing £20 towards their libel costs against the
Observer
. I composed the letter with care to make it clear I wasn’t supporting the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, to which they belong.

Wednesday 29 November

Had a meeting with Jim Schlesinger, the US Energy Secretary, who is over here. He was once Secretary of State for Defence and was sacked by Ford because of a disagreement he had with Kissinger, and he has also headed the CIA. He is a tough Republican intellectual, lives an austere life, in line with the Presbyterian faith to which he was converted from Judaism, and is a very dour man. He doesn’t believe in publicity or any of that stuff, and is not gregarious at all. When I took him upstairs to my room, where a huge crowd of people had gathered, he just sat down and stared at everyone. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Anyway, I welcomed him and said I’d been looking forward to his visit. ‘I hope it’s OK if we do our business in this order: your energy policy/our energy policy; the world energy scene; Iran, Mexico; OPEC and oil prices; UN international energy; coal policy; fast-breeder reactors; and anything else you might like to raise.’

‘Fine.’

‘How would you like to start?’

‘Up to you.’

Tea was brought in at that point and he said, ‘Is that your mug? If it were any bigger you wouldn’t be able to lift it!’ I told him I had a two-pint mug at home but I didn’t bring it to the office. It was a sign of friendliness on his part after a slightly tense beginning.

‘Tell us first how your energy policy in America is going,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘politics is like ju-jitsu. We asked for more powers than we got, but we got more than they realised, and we are now going to use them.’ He went on to give a very tough presentation of their policy.

I said, ‘My assessment is that we have to think long-term and that is beyond the range of market forces. I don’t worship market forces, though I am not being completely ideological about it. You’ve got these great big companies and you’ve got to keep an eye on them.’

What followed was a very informed discussion between two experienced people – he with far more power and experience, but it did range over everything and I must say I enjoyed it.

He looked at my Workers’ Union banner and said it was beautiful. I said, ‘You see the religious themes depicted in it – trade unionism grew out of the chapels in this country.’

‘It could have come from the Soviet Union, with those realistic figures,’ he
said, to which I replied, ‘Socialist realism is very much the same as capitalist realism.’

‘What do you mean?’

I said, ‘Developing societies with a lot of self-confidence and thrust go for realistic art. It’s only in decaying societies that you get all this decadent stuff like the Impressionists. That’s why Khrushchev and Eisenhower agreed about chocolate-box art.’ He laughed.

I asked him if he knew where the hammer and sickle were to be found in London and he didn’t, so I promised to show him.

We walked out to my car to go to lunch at the Dorchester Hotel; he had no security guards with him, and when I asked he told me that he never allows them.

I got the driver to pass by St James’s Park because Schlesinger is a great birdwatcher. I asked him about the CIA and he said, ‘I was there for five months at a difficult time, right in the middle of Watergate when we had done some terrible things.’ He said the CIA got up to some funny things but at least they tried to maintain some standards and co-operate up to a point with the White House. But Nixon had just expected them to do anything he wanted and that wasn’t on.

‘I am puzzled about Nixon’s departure,’ I said. ‘I never could quite understand it.’

‘Nixon lied to the American people and they wouldn’t have that. If he had said, “Yes, there was some funny business for which I take full responsibility”, his popularity would have risen enormously, but he looked the American people in the eye and he lied to them.’ Schlesinger thought Nixon had behaved stupidly and could otherwise have survived. Also, he thought a Democrat could have got away with it because of their majority in Congress but, as a Republican, Nixon had miscalculated.

As we passed the imposing Victoria Memorial in the middle of Buckingham Palace roundabout, I said, ‘There’s the hammer and sickle.’ There were the two lions, and a man holding a hammer aloft and a girl carrying a sickle. He laughed.

I told him I admired Carter and that he struck me as a sensitive guy. ‘Do you know that Jim Callaghan is very attached to him, and when the dollar was in difficulties I think Jim called in the American Ambassador just to express his support for Carter,’ I said.

‘Yes, the President knew that and was pleased.’

At lunch were Frank Kearton, Derek Ezra, Moss Evans, John Hill, Dick Mabon and others.

After lunch I said to Schlesinger, ‘I am not going to make a big fuss so I am going to ask you just to say a word.’

Schlesinger replied, ‘I have enjoyed today very much but I never thought I would be taken by a British Secretary of State for Energy to see the hammer and sickle outside Buckingham Palace!’

So Dick Mabon turned to Frank Judd sitting beside him. ‘Tony’s done it again!’

‘My God,’ I said to Schlesinger, ‘if you go round telling that story, I’ll be in trouble with the CIA.’

I think he took me literally. ‘Oh, don’t bother about that,’ he said. Everyone laughed and it was fun.

Thursday 30 November

Before Cabinet, Merlyn Rees came up to me and said, ‘By the way, Tony, I want to make the point again that I control all the security services personally. I check and review everybody whose phone is tapped and I assure you it is completely under my control.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘Chapman Pincher’s recent book claimed that you weren’t told anything.’