The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (102 page)

Driving back to London after what was a moving and tender and lovely evening, I did feel that the work had to begin again. At a personal level, I’ll have no difficulty earning a living from media work, but talking about politics is not the same as being an active political figure; being engaged in the business of preparing to hold power is what provides you with a platform and gives greater meaning to what you’re saying.

Sunday 31 July – Trip to Japan

I caught the Japan Airlines flight at 2.30 and the plane flew to Tokyo over the North Pole. I read the various briefs I had had prepared for the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, including one on the General Council of Trade Unions (Sohyo), which is a sort of progressive, democratic and vaguely socialist federation, the largest in Japan, supported by the Japanese Socialist Party. I also read about Gensuikyo, the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.

Monday 1 August

To the reception, where a lot of journalists wanted to interview me, and I did speak to many people, but my deafness is a real barrier at the moment and the Japanese accent is very hard to get used to.

In a way, Japan is rather like Britain – they are both islands, self-contained, inward-looking, conservative and hierarchical, facing the same economic pressures which are driving politics to the right.

Tuesday 2 August

I had a fascinating talk with Robert Alvarez, an American from the Environmental Policy Institute in Washington, who is in Japan. I asked him about the sale of British plutonium to the United States. He told me that it started in 1959 and went on until 1979, when it was probably terminated by President Carter. It was a barter agreement under which the United States supplied us with tritium and high-enriched uranium for nuclear-powered Polaris submarines in exchange for plutonium from our Magnox civil nuclear power stations for use in American nuclear weapons.

Alvarez said the Americans wanted the Magnox plutonium because it was purer than that from the PWR. He told me that in 1980 the supply resumed, partly to fend off criticisms of Carter by Reagan on the eve of the presidential election.

From 1966 to 1970 and from 1975 to 19791 was the Minister responsible
for atomic energy, and I had absolutely no knowledge of this. Encouraged by my officials, I used to give talks on the uses of civil nuclear power, while all that time our civil power stations were supplying plutonium for American nuclear weapons. Recently Ross Hesketh of the CEGB made a statement in Britain in which he revealed this story, and he was promptly sacked by Sir Walter Marshall, Chairman of the CEGB – which has led to some argument in Britain.

Thursday 4 August

I was driven to see the Governor of Kanagawa, through these enormous industrial areas. It must be the greatest accumulation of industrialisation to be found almost anywhere in the world. It makes my heart bleed to think of all the previously productive areas in Britain which are now just decaying and declining.

Later I caught the flight to Hiroshima.

There I went to the meeting with the ‘Hibakusha’, as the victims of the actual bomb raids are called. An old lady, who said she was thirty-five in 1945, now seventy-three, was terribly badly injured and couldn’t stand upright. She was working near Hiroshima in August 1945, for the military, and had been 1.1 kilometres from the epicentre of the explosion. She had seen the flash. She had been trapped in wreckage, was unconscious for two days and had suffered blindness, loss of hair, bleeding gums, fever and diarrhoea, and loss of power in her fingers and toes. All her organs were affected. She said, ‘I try to lead a normal life. My father died of acute leukaemia in October 1945. I had breast and kidney cancer and operations for cataracts. My fingers and limbs still tremble. I can barely walk. And,’ she said very quietly, ‘I so much resent the production of nuclear weapons. Atomic bombs have made no positive contribution to the world. I am very old now, but I am still learning what we can do to help the world and I feel keenly that I must work for peace. I want to be of service and I hope to live to see peace established.’ It was very moving.

There are 370,000 Hibakusha left but there is a rapid death rate among them, particularly recently through cancer. Two-thirds of them die of cancer. In Japan the doctors don’t really reveal the cause of death. One man told me, ‘It is most important to record our experiences before we die. There are no social security payments for the survivors, and most are suffering from a disease known as “atomic bomb bura-bura”. The Government doesn’t recognise it. Of course, the American Government is really responsible, but the Japanese Government is too.’

A Russian delegate told the meeting that he had lost his family among the twenty million Russians killed in the war. The bomb, he said, was dropped by American imperialists. Fixing the responsibility for dropping the bomb is very important. I had always accepted the general explanation that it was done to hasten the end of the war, but actually the then US Secretary of
Defense revealed that it was done to establish a strong position
vis-à-vis
the Soviet Union before the war ended.

I got back to the hotel at about 11.30 and dictated from my notes.

Friday 5 August

To the Peace Museum which was absolutely packed, and the exhibition moved me to tears. Children were handing out labels to the visitors saying ‘No more war’.

There was a huge model of Hiroshima just after the bomb was dropped showing absolute devastation except for a few buildings that survived. From the ceiling hung a black rod at the bottom of which was a red blob showing where the epicentre was. Next was a vivid scene of a life-size model of a woman with her hair standing on end, bleeding, with the skin burned off her and another woman with a burned child. Behind them was a massive backdrop of Hiroshima burning. There were samples of the girders which had melted and children’s little luncheon boxes containing food scorched by the bomb. There were some granite steps which had been outside a bank, with the permanent imprint of someone who had been sitting there when the bomb fell. It was terrifying. I wrote in the visitors’ book, ‘Every child in the world should see this museum.’

I had to go out to recover myself. No sane human being could possibly assent to the use of bombs 1,000 times as great as that. It cannot be right. There are some views you come to in life from which you can never be shaken, and nothing will ever shake me in the view that such a weapon cannot be used and therefore should not be built and must not be threatened. If it ever happens again, it will be the greatest crime in the whole of human history, because far more people will be killed.

Outside, in front of the car park, there was a disturbance involving some Fascists in blue overalls who were standing beside four vehicles displaying the old imperial Japanese flag. I took a few pictures. They were addressing us through loudspeakers, apparently saying that the future of Japan lies in nuclear energy, Japan must have nuclear weapons and Communism must be contained.

We went off to the atom bomb victims’ hospital where the Vice-Director ran through a description of the various injuries they deal with – burns, blast, radiation, cancer, leukaemia, kidney trouble, cataracts, cheloids, purple spots, lassitude. I asked about genetic effects, but he had no information on that. The hospital is run by the Red Cross and gets no government money.

Monday 8 August

Had breakfast with the Venerable Sato. Sato was pleased with the conference and said the media coverage had been excellent. I thanked him very much indeed for making it possible for me to visit Japan.

Looking back on the week, it certainly was an interesting experience. The
peace movement has a life and vitality of its own and its leading figures know each other well through having met at previous conferences. During the years that they were working on peace problems, I was a Minister in a government that was building nuclear weapons and following international policies which the peace movement itself found anathema.

Viewed from such a distance, Britain appears as a primitive, aggressive, feudalistic colony of the United States, gradually being taken over by the EEC, the multinationals and the IMF.

Tuesday 6 September

Sally went into the West London Hospital and our second grandson, James, was born to her and Hilary early on Wednesday morning.

Sunday 25 September

The
Mail on Sunday
carried an interview with Neil Kinnock by Jilly Cooper, and it was worse than I had been warned to expect He was asked about various colleagues and came out with some astonishing remarks. He said Meacher was regarded as my vicar on earth – ‘He’s kind, scholarly and weak as hell’. He called me a spent force who ‘couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding’, and denied he had once said I was a blindworm trying to be an adder. This clever-clever Kinnock, who has been getting away with funny remarks which endear him to the media, will find, as he approaches the leadership of the Party, that they give enormous offence. Apparently he rang Michael Meacher to apologise and said he had been misquoted. But he didn’t ring me! That type of approach to personal relations, combined with his general inadequacy, is not going to be good for him.

I am feeling a bit depressed at the moment. I think the real effect of losing my seat is apparent, and no doubt being out of the leadership election has caught up with me. It is a fact that I have lost a platform and an income, and have no absolute certainty that I will get back. Indeed, if I do get back, I fear it may be on the basis of a tremendous battle with Shirley Williams or someone put up to fight me. I do understand how unemployed people lose their sense of self-worth.

Wednesday 28 September

At the NEC I passed a handwritten letter to Neil Kinnock.

I attached a photocopy of the article, in which Jilly Cooper had asked if it was true that he had once described me as a blindworm trying to be an
adder. The relevant paragraph read: ‘For a second Mr Kinnock flickered between discretion and the desire to be accredited with a wisecrack, then opted for the former, saying: “Attribute that to me and I’ll kill you.”’

I got a response later, as follows:

Well, that settles the matter as far as I am concerned.

Sunday 2 October – Labour Party Conference, Brighton

I confess that I am dictating this on 14 October from very accurate notes.

At the meeting of the NEC, there was an attempt to remit the T&G resolution committing the next Labour Government to scrapping all nuclear weapons systems unilaterally, but by 14 to 11 we accepted it. Kinnock abstained, made a big thing about abstaining and then tried to get the issue reopened, but Sam McCluskie wouldn’t have it. I was confirmed to speak on the unemployment debate, and I reported that I would be moving the Irish resolution from the floor on behalf of Kensington GMC.

Neil Kinnock overwhelmingly won the leadership on the first ballot, and Roy Hattersley the deputy leadership on the first ballot. The TGWU went against the recommendations of their executive and voted for Hattersley instead of Michael Meacher, which was a scandal, but nobody referred to it because everybody wanted the ‘dream ticket’. Meacher himself voted for Kinnock and not for Heffer, which was a disgrace, really.

Tuesday 4 October

I was elected top of the NEC constituency section again with the highest vote I have had for twenty years, the tenth year in a row I have received the most votes.

Michael Foot made his farewell speech and got tremendous applause. Caroline went back to London to take her evening class; she doesn’t like Conference.

Thursday 6 October

In the afternoon Kinnock made his first speech as Leader. It was pretty vacuous, I thought, but he got a huge ovation.

Friday 11 November

I went to Bristol to attend a memorial meeting for Alan Mason, the South West Regional Organiser, who died recently. While I was there Mike Cocks told me privately that Eric Varley is meeting his Party’s executive committee in Chesterfield tonight and intends to announce that he is resigning from Parliament to become Chief Executive of Coalite. I must admit it took some time for this to sink in, but it became quite clear that this would mean a by-election in a seat with a 7,000 Labour majority.

When I got home (on the last train) I spoke on the phone to Arthur Scargill, who had a word with Peter Heathfield, General Secretary of the Derbyshire Miners, who is also a member of the GMC of the Chesterfield Party, and Arthur rang me back and said, ‘You must move quickly. We will get statements put out in the constituency to the effect that they would like you, and you must be ready to say you would be pleased to respond.’

My prospects may possibly have changed a bit.

Saturday 19 November

I have been in touch with Tom and Margaret Vallins, who are both on the Chesterfield executive committee. Apparently the NUM are allowed only five delegates at the selection conference out of a total of 132 votes, so the miners haven’t actually got a dominating role. They have decided to nominate a miner, and vote for me on the second ballot – which is better than nothing. The YS have nominated me, but whether that’s a good start or not I don’t know. The AUEW are pretty strong. Alan Tuffin of the Union of Communication Workers sent instructions to the UCW there to nominate Charles Morris, who lost his Manchester seat in the boundaries redistribution. That caused some resentment among the UCW people in Chesterfield. ASLEF have got a strong branch there. Tom Sawyer is getting on to NUPE and there are two or three wards that could nominate me, so I might end up with a few nominations. The first hurdle is to get shortlisted, the second hurdle is to get into the final ballot, and if that happened I think I would have a reasonable chance.