The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (89 page)

‘You know my view, Jim. Conference must be free to decide.’

‘Maybe I didn’t handle the NEC very well on the manifesto issue but I will not allow this to happen. I may have been obstinate but the Lords issue was absolutely wrong.’

He told me he had seen my picture on the front of the
Economist
and had thought to himself: There’s a man who has really got a great section of the Party behind him; why doesn’t he use his influence? and so on. He accepted that I didn’t want to be Leader, and I said, ‘If I did, I’d be a bloody fool to be saying what I’m saying now because it’s alienating a lot of people.’

There was one amusing exchange. Jim said I was more devious than I admitted. I reminded him that he had once told me he wasn’t as nice as he looked, and I said I wasn’t as nice as I looked either.

Wednesday 26 September

Julie and I are absolutely swamped by letters – they are just pouring in. I don’t know how to cope with it all.

Tonight is ‘The Parkinson Show’, and Caroline and the children gave me lots of advice about how to handle it.

I was picked up at 5 by Anne McDermid and Chris Mullin and we went to the studio. I had never met Michael Parkinson before and I liked him immediately. He’s a very agreeable and intelligent guy. The actor Stewart Granger and the show jumping commentator Dorian Williams were the other guests.

We did a run-through and then I was interviewed alone for half an hour. It was a delight; Michael was so friendly. He asked how it felt to be the bogeyman, and I said it had nothing to do with me. He asked about the Conference amendments and resolutions and I explained them. Would there be a split? No. Then he asked about Father and the peerage case and I dealt with that. He finally came back to the Conference and asked if I thought we’d win. I said yes, I thought this view would prevail.

In fact it was the best TV interview I have done. About 8 million people watch it, I believe.

Eric Heffer, Frances, Mother and Dave all rang later to say how good the programme was.

Sunday 30 September – Labour Party Conference, Brighton

Press coverage very hostile to me. Hilary arrived from London and I gave him a big kiss.

At lunch, who should Barbara Castle bring along but Janet Brown, who does the brilliant impersonation of Mrs Thatcher. She was all dressed up like Mrs Thatcher, and a lot of photos were taken, including one with me.

Mik said today, ‘I expect a thousand people have told you but you were brilliant on Parkinson.’ I felt that programme was a turning point.

Hilary went off to the Common Market Safeguards Committee AGM. He was introduced as a councillor and got a tremendous reception. Afterwards I was told by Jack Watson, who clutched me by both arms, that Hilary had made a great impression, and Ron Leighton told me that he eclipsed me. I was so proud.

At 2.30 I went to the NEC meeting to consider our position on the resolutions to Conference.

After some attempts to muddle the issues, I won the vote 15 to 11 recommending Conference to take the constitutional amendments.

I then moved the Coventry South West resolution from Victor Schonfield and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy on mandatory reselection of MPs.

Shirley said, ‘This removes all safeguards for Members – an MP isn’t even given notice if he or she is removed.’

‘Shirley is absolutely wrong,’ I insisted. ‘She doesn’t understand it. If you have a selection conference you are not removing any safeguards because there are none.’

Jim said, ‘I can only tell you it won’t stand up, it won’t last. MPs do a job of work. What about the Militants who are taking over the management committees in the small inner-city constituency parties?’

A vote to accept the resolution from Coventry South West was carried by 15 to 9.

On the manifesto there was a long and complicated discussion, but in the end the constitutional amendment to Clause 5 that I had drafted and moved (and that had gone through the July Executive by 9 to 8) was defeated by 14 to 12 because Alex Kitson voted against it on behalf of the TGWU, and Doug Hoyle voted against it on behalf of ASTMS. So two important unions defeated us.

The composite resolution calling for an electoral college in principle was carried by 20 votes to 3.

We won on six out of nine votes. A marvellous success for us.

The NEC considered the rest of the composite resolutions, and then I caught a taxi to the Institute for Workers’ Control fringe meeting on accountability versus patronage.

Tuesday 2 October

It was Jim’s speech today, and he was quieter than I expected, amusing and light-hearted. It was effective, to be candid. He robustly defended the Government’s achievements and attacked those who had attacked him. He warned against the constitutional changes, and talked about internationalism and compassion. No socialist content whatever, of course.

But it was warmly received, and I did get up for the standing ovation at the end. Joan Lestor turned to me and said, ‘What a scandalous thing to do’, and I said, ‘Not in the slightest. I served in his government and I respect him.’ I am rather fond of Jim anyway.

In the afternoon Conference debated the constitutional resolutions. On the election of the Party Leader through an electoral college, the AUEW had split and voted against. It made all the difference, because with the AUEW vote we would have passed the resolution. But the fixers won’t win. We’ll come back next year and put it right. I went out while the result was being read out; I didn’t want to hear.

I came back in for the debate on the mandatory reselection of MPs. Mik made a good speech, and Eric Heffer wound up, with quite a lot of barracking from the floor. It was an angry Conference, with the PLP and trade union sections pitched aganst the constituency Labour parties. When the vote was taken it was 4 million to 3 million for composite 33, which instructed the Conference Arrangements Committee to put immediately to the Conference the amendment to the Party constitution. This amendment provided for reselection of MPs once in every Parliament and this was carried by a majority of 2 million.

So the efforts of the Right have failed. It has been the most amazing campaign, and after five years of hard work we’ve carried it through. The MPs will just have to accept it. It means there are 635 vacancies for candidates in the next Parliament. MPs will have to take notice of their GMCs.

Wednesday 3 October

Frances and Francis and I went over my speech to Conference for this afternoon. It didn’t look very good on paper, but then they never do.

To the conference hall, and the first debate was on the manifesto – the composite resolution calling for constitutional amendments to be put before the 1980 Conference to give control of the manifesto to the NEC alone. It was proposed by Stuart Weir of Hackney South and Shoreditch CLP, and we won by almost a million votes. Amazing when you think the matter was first raised by me only in June at the NEC’s Home Policy Committee.
Although we didn’t get the constitutional change itself through, we got a clear statement of how it was to be organised.

Friday 5 October

A month ago I never expected we’d achieve any of these things. The PLP is absolutely furious. There will now be a major attempt by the Right to oust Jim Callaghan, partly because they’ll say he wasn’t strong enough to beat the Left, but also because they only have a year to get Denis Healey elected by the PLP before any rule changes occur.

Thursday 15 November

To Bristol and in the hotel I heard the most sensational news bulletin. Sir Anthony Blunt, the Adviser for the Queen’s Pictures, knighted in the 1970s, was revealed as the ‘fourth man’ in the Burgess/Maclean/Philby spy ring. He confessed in 1964 to having been a Russian spy and was protected, and knighted
after
that. Now he’s been stripped of his knighthood and he’s left the country.

All this came out in the Commons in a written answer from Mrs Thatcher, but that means it was known to the 1964–70 Labour Government, the Heath Government and the 1974–79 Labour Government. If Andrew Boyle had not given this away in his book
The Climate of Treason
it would have never been revealed. Amazing. It shows again that the British Establishment trusts the upper class to be reliable without vetting, whereas Philip Agee or Aubrey, Berry and Campbell are outlaws, hounded and treated quite differently. Incidentally, had the Official Secrets Act been amended as is now proposed, Andrew Boyle would be liable to prosecution for publishing this.

The minimum lending rate has gone up to 17 per cent; this will lead to bankruptcies on a large scale and unemployment.

Friday 16 November

It appears that Prime Ministers from Home onwards were
not
told by the security services about Blunt, and therefore the key question is whether there was a secret state within a state which was not under democratic control.

Tuesday 20 November

Blunt is to give a press conference today. When you consider that his ‘offence’ ended in 1945 it is hard to see him dragged through the mire.

On the 1 o’clock news Blunt was shown being cross-examined by a small group of journalists on behalf of the BBC and ITN. He came over with some distinction really. He said he’d put conscience above the law and his loyalty to his country, and he regretted it, but that was his explanation. Nothing had happened since the war, he claimed, and all he’d done was to hand over
military intelligence about the Germans to the Russians – nothing that put our own security at risk. It’s a very interesting story and I asked the Speaker this morning if I could speak in the debate tomorrow. Mrs Thatcher announced that business would be postponed to debate the Blunt affair.

Tuesday 4 December

At 12.10 I was taken to the Cartoonist pub in Shoe Lane to receive the Golden Joker Award. I was uneasy about going but the atmosphere was jolly – all the cartoonists were there. I mustn’t impute to everyone who works in the media the hostility that one gets from the proprietors and Editors. I was presented with a gold tie-pin and I made a speech about the important role of the cartoonist in society.

Appearing in a human guise from time to time is quite useful – Mrs Thatcher and Enoch Powell have both received the award. Vic Gibbons told me he was a socialist; his grandfather, John Burgess, was a founder of the ILP. He gave me two original cartoons. Mac, the
Daily Mail
cartoonist, presented me with a cartoon showing me walking along the street smoking my pipe and a lot of flies buzzing round my head, while round the corner Jim Callaghan, David Owen and Denis Healey were wielding great clubs, one of them saying, ‘Remember, if we’re asked, we were just swatting the greenfly!’

Friday 14 December

To Bristol for my surgery. Surgeries do bring MPs up against the harshest and saddest aspects of life. One woman who came to see me was a widow of about seventy living on a pension. A year ago she took into her house an elderly disabled man whom she had befriended, a bachelor. So the local DHSS had stopped her widow’s pension on the grounds that they were cohabiting and would have to be treated as a single unit and receive social security as a married couple. The man would otherwise have to go into a home (at a great cost to the ratepayers). She had appealed to the tribunal for the restoration of her pension and she said that the head of the tribunal had asked her whether they were having sexual intercourse – she broke down and wept because of the shame of it. Having met them together, I knew it was an absurd idea. They have separate rooms. But even if they were cohabiting what does that have to do with her entitlement to a widow’s pension? I promised to write to the DHSS and get the matter reviewed, but I know I won’t win.

Walked in the pouring rain to the hotel and got soaked to the skin. Had a hot bath, dried my trousers on the radiator and slept until the Party GMC at Unity House.

The GMC went on for three hours and was entirely dominated by Bryan Beckingham, Pete Hammond and others from the Militant Tendency. They moved endless resolutions. Their arguments are sensible and they
make perfectly good radical points but they do go on interminably in their speeches.

Friday 21 December

To Bristol, and on the train were a lot of slightly drunk business executives in their late thirties singing in the buffet car. One was wearing a paper hat.

I queued up to get my tea and bacon and egg and they were saying, ‘There’s that f. . . . . g extremist, Mr Benn’, and they sang bits of ‘The Red Flag’, and kept up an absolute barrage of insulting remarks.

As I went by carrying my tray they opened the door with elaborate and false courtesy and bowed and said, ‘Happy Christmas to you, Sir’, and I said, ‘Thank you’ and went on.

I think that was the first experience of real whipping-up of feeling by the press against the Labour Party. After the victory of Mrs Thatcher, the old Establishment is now wildly self-confident – the Civil Service, the military, business, bankers and so on.

Monday 31 December

Stansgate. In the evening, after the meal, Mother sat and talked; she is fascinating. She is eighty-three next year, and first came to London in 1910 when Edward VII was on the throne. She knew Asquith, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson, and so on. She has a wide theological knowledge, and to hear her describing the various meanings of the immaculate conception, the physical ascension of Jesus and all that is so interesting. She reads the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek and so she knows the nuances of translation.

Looking at the Thatcher Government, it has begun implementing its reactionary policies with great vigour. Of course, it is a unifying force for the Labour Movement at a time when our debates are inevitably internal and divisive.

Tuesday 5 February 1980

20,000 people, mainly young women, crammed into Central Hall for a rally against the Corrie Bill, which would restrict a woman’s right to an abortion. I spoke briefly to offer my support, and said there should be no restrictions of a woman’s right to decide within the provisions of the present law. This was one of many attacks on women’s rights – the Employment Bill, the sexist and racist immigration laws, child benefit cuts, the tax laws – and women must organise; it was the only way to win. In calling for the right to choose and the freedom to control their own bodies, these women are rediscovering what the whole trade union movement has been fighting for – the right to choose, the right to decide how our own bodies are going to be used.