The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (88 page)

Wednesday 9 May

WENT INTO THE
Commons for the meeting with the ex-Cabinet at 10, and there were four policemen checking each car. The meeting was in the Leader of the Opposition’s suite overlooking New Palace Yard.

The first item was the leadership. Michael Foot suggested Jim be elected unanimously and that was agreed. Michael said all the other officers within the PLP would have to be elected and we settled dates for that.

I asked when we were going to talk about what had happened in the Election.

Jim said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened. We lost the Election because people didn’t get their dustbins emptied, because commuters were angry about
train disruption and because of too much union power. That’s all there is to it.’

I insisted, ‘I think we ought to go back over what has happened.’

Jim said, ‘No inquests’, echoed by Roy Hattersley. ‘We must maintain collective Cabinet responsibility, and I don’t want anyone to table a motion in the PLP without first clearing it with the Chief Whip, and I don’t want any member of the Shadow Cabinet to speak without consulting the appropriate spokesman.’

That was just amazing – collective Cabinet responsibility in Opposition!

Thursday 10 May

I put out my press statement that I wasn’t going to stand for the Shadow Cabinet and, as a courtesy, I rang Jim immediately afterwards to let him know. I think I woke him because he sounded very gruff.

At 1.45 I went to see Jim in his room. He said, ‘If I’d known you were not going to stand for the Shadow Cabinet, my decision might have been different.’ I presumed he meant his decision to stand again. When I asked why, he said, ‘I’d like to go back to my farm.’

I told him, ‘I think you’re right to stay in, and I am pleased you’ve said there isn’t a vacancy because we can debate the issues without the leadership question interfering. There has to be a debate because some very important themes will arise. You’ve had me in the Cabinet a long time, you know what I think and what I’m going to say.’

He said, ‘You talk about the Party but there are two Communists on the NEC.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

He named them.

‘Are you saying that they are members of the CP?’

‘No,’ said Jim, ‘but they are in continual touch with King Street.’

‘Well, all that tells me is that MI5 bug their telephones, and that worries me much more. When I asked whether my phone was bugged, I didn’t get an answer.’ I said I honestly didn’t think he knew what went on, and that was worrying too.

At 2.20 I went into the House and sat two rows behind the Front Bench, just like a new Member, and I realised that for years I had paid no attention to Parliament whatsoever.

Mrs Thatcher came in. MPs were being sworn in, and I joined the queue to affirm, after all the Ministers had been through.

Tuesday 15 May

State Opening of Parliament. Seeing the Lords and Ladies in their finery made me realise how little we did in power to make the country look more democratic. We are such a disappointment in office.

Jim looked old and bent and sad and tired. Mrs Thatcher made a most
impassioned speech, from notes, except for one passage about Rhodesia which had been typed out no doubt on the insistence of the FO – the most rumbustious, rampaging, right-wing speech that I’ve heard from the government Front Bench in the whole of my life.

Afterwards I saw Ted Heath and told him, ‘I’ve never heard a speech like that in all my years in Parliament’

He said, ‘Neither have I.’

‘I suppose this really was what Selsdon was all about.’

‘Oh, there never was a Selsdon policy,’ Heath replied. ‘It was invented by Harold Wilson. Look at our 1970 manifesto; it wasn’t there at all.’

I went on, ‘Well, Keith Joseph, when he was Shadow Minister of Technology in 1969–70, made a lot of similar speeches.’

‘Quite different,’ he responded.

I said I had some sympathy with Thatcher – with her dislike of the wishy-washy centre of British politics. He gave me such a frosty look that I daresay I had touched a raw nerve.

Sunday 17 June

Our thirtieth wedding anniversary, and a marvellous thirty years we’ve had together. If the next thirty years are as happy, I will be richly blessed.

Took breakfast to Caroline and read the papers. The
Express
had a piece about the great struggle for the future of the Labour Party between Callaghan and Benn, Heffer and Atkinson. It is right in a way.

Wednesday 27 June

Just after midnight (of 26 June), the phone rang and it was Hilary. He said he thought Rosalind was dead. We took a taxi to his home in West London.

Caroline felt Rosalind’s pulse. Hilary rang the doctor and he came and declared her dead. Rosalind’s parents, Lesley and Peter Retey arrived. Gradually our whole family arrived and sat in the bedroom and talked and talked. It was all very painful.

Thursday 28 June

Condolences came in from Dennis Skinner, Frank McElhone, Dick Douglas, from a Tory MP and many others. The Labour Party sent a telegram to Hilary, and that sort of sympathy and support is a tremendous comfort.

Thursday 5 July

Rosalind’s funeral. The family have rallied round wonderfully. Hilary’s front garden was covered in wreaths; the one that touched me most was from Dave, the milkman. Hilary’s workmates at ASTMS had sent white roses. There were masses of flowers. It was a boiling hot day.

At precisely 10.45 the hearse came. On top of the coffin was a lovely wreath of red roses from Hilary.

When we got to Chiswick cemetery the chapel doors were open and the organ was being played by the head of the music department of Holland Park (Rosalind and Hilary’s old school). Mother read from the Bible, and Peter Retey read a poem by Hartley Coleridge called ‘Early Death’. Ann Morrish read the sonnet ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’. Stephen played a piece he had composed on the organ. Then Hilary got up and, a few feet from his beloved Rosalind, delivered his beautiful address, without a tremor in his voice. It was perceptive, sensitive, tender and amusing but at no stage was it sentimental.

Six men including Joshua, Stephen and Hilary and Rosalind’s two brothers carried the coffin to the grave. Mother said, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, Hilary tossed some soil in, and we all threw in red roses. It was terribly, terribly sad.

Thursday 19 July

Heard that Melissa got a First Class degree from LSE. As soon as the House had voted against hanging – by a majority of 120 – I dashed home and gave her a hug. She was told that she was the first woman for twenty years to get a First in history at LSE, and there had not been a First Class in history there for seven years. She was so excited, we stayed up till 3 in the morning talking.

Tuesday 31 July

After a meeting of the Fabian Society Executive, Michael Meacher, Larry Whitty of the GMWU, Brian Sedgemore and I went and bought hamburgers at McDonald’s and sat in the piazza outside Westminster Cathedral. Dusk was just falling, the cathedral was beautifully illuminated and a half-moon rose above it. One felt one was in Istanbul.

Larry Whitty described the trade union leaders’ attitude. The general line was going to be that all these constitutional questions should be postponed at this year’s Conference and referred to an inquiry.

Thursday 23 August

Eighteen copies of the book Chris Mullin has been working on with me, called
Arguments for Socialism
, arrived today. It is a great moment seeing for the first time a book one has written.

The
Economist
had their cover story on me: the article inside said that the Labour Party was bankrupt and that I was filling the vacuum with new ideas (dangerous ideas, of course).

Sunday 26 August

Stansgate. Hilary and I had a day out. First we drove to Hatfield to see Ray
Buckton, who lives in a delightful 400-year-old thatched cottage which he has renovated.

Ray told me about the threats to his life during the 1972 and 1974 miners’ strikes (when ASLEF was providing industrial support), and inevitably we went on to talk about the security services. He said that as a result of the threats a chap from Special Branch was attached to him, and he turned out to be the son of a Welsh miner and got to know Ray quite well. He more or less told Ray that some of his telephone calls were being bugged. Ray wondered whether some of the death threats hadn’t been engineered to provide an excuse for his being under surveillance during the dispute.

He told me there was a right-wing group – including Bill Sirs and Sid Weighell – working hard to gain control of Trade Unionists for a Labour Victory.

On to Harlow, to Clive Jenkins’s house, where we had arranged to meet Caroline and Stephen. Clive was wearing an apron saying ‘
YOU CAN’T BE TOO THIN OR TOO RICH
’. His house consists of four cottages knocked into one, in which forty-one people lived before the war. Now it is just he and his wife Moira, and his two children.

There were guns on display, two wagon wheels at the front and a commemorative plaque of John Milton that he had bought. He was barbecuing sausages; we sat down at 2 and got up at 4.30 after a fantastic lunch of five courses.

He told me that David Basnett wants Jim to give up the leadership, and in conversation David had asked Clive, ‘Who do you want?’ Clive had replied, ‘Tony Benn.’ On David’s list of candidates are Owen, Healey, Shore and Merlyn Rees. Clive said, ‘David is nervous of you because you are serious’, and implied that David was offering me support for the electoral college if I drop everything else. But what I really care about is the manifesto and accountability: the Party Leader issue won’t make any difference.

He told me
en passant
that Tom Jackson had once been in the CP. Clive is full of lots of little stories – he loves exchanging gossip.

He has been offered a year’s scholarship in Washington, which he can’t take, but he has accepted a six-week stay and they have laid on facilities for him. His attitude is: if it is going, take it.

Monday 27 August

Drove to Southend to see Bill Keys of SOGAT. Bill is a nice guy: I don’t know him well but he is passionately in favour of racial equality; he said his experience in the East End of London as a kid had really converted him to that view.

Bill was terribly friendly. There is no doubt whatever that the trade union leaders, even those who don’t like me very much, see me as a factor in the situation that they have to take seriously.

Drove home. On the news we heard that Lord Mountbatten and his
grandson had been killed in an explosion on a boat off the Sligo coast, close to the border with Northern Ireland. It may have the most tremendous repercussions: the murder of an international figure, the Supreme Allied Commander in South-East Asia during the war, a Viceroy of India, a member of the royal family, is going to make people think again about Northern Ireland. The whole world will discuss this particular event and I think it may be a turning point.

Tuesday 11 September

Went up to Corby by train for a demonstration by steelworkers. Before the war, Stewart and Lloyd, the private steel owners, discovered low-grade iron ore in Northamptonshire and built Corby up over twenty years into the biggest steel plant in Europe, attracting people from all over the world; 72 per cent of the workers were from Scotland. The workforce lived in camps until about ten years ago when they started building up the new town. But Corby was always a one-industry town. Now the plant, at least the iron- and steel-making part, is under threat of closure.

I couldn’t tell them, but the Labour Cabinet had decided in February this year to support the closure of Corby. These guys are now faced with the possibility of 30 per cent male unemployment, and they have called in the Labour Party to help them fight. An awful irony; I felt tremendously guilty.

Wednesday 12 September

At 3.30 I went to see Jim Callaghan; I had suggested we had a word before Conference. He’s in his new room, in the Serjeant-at-Arms’s old flat.

I tried to be friendly and said I hoped he would be safe when he goes to Ireland because I had read that he might be in danger after the Mountbatten business. He wasn’t too concerned but he said, ‘Poor old Roy Mason is deeply worried; he has absolutely maximum security but still he’s afraid of what they’ll do to him.’ I sympathise with him.

I had decided that I would talk about how we could make Conference the launching pad for the Party’s winter campaign against the Tories. We had to have a really good programme with the TUC for economic and social advance and jobs. I didn’t want him to think I was concerned only with the internal Party democracy issues.

‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘we have to be realistic about public expenditure; we do need more productivity in British industry.’ He just gave the old Thatcher/Healey view.

We came to the question of Conference’s power over policy, and he said the Party would split over it. I declared, ‘Jim, you’ve had more experience of this than I have but the situation is nothing like 1951 or 1959.’

‘For the first time in my life,’ he said, ‘the trade unions are openly talking about disaffiliating from the Party. And take this Militant group. I am very
worried. If you saw the reports I am getting’ (presumably security reports) ‘you’d realise what a danger it is.’

I remarked, ‘Is it any different from the Bevanites, or the Tribune Group, Victory for Socialism or CND? I don’t think so. No one group has ever got hold of the Labour Party.’ I was more concerned with the Reg Prentices and Dick Tavernes.

‘It is very regrettable what they’ve done.’

Jim is obsessed with the Left. On the Conference, he agreed that reselection could be discussed. He had an open mind on the question of the electoral college – of course Healey wouldn’t become Leader if there was a college. On the drafting of the manifesto, he would not accept the proposed changes. ‘I must warn you I have a quote here on the subject from Keir Hardie that I shall use. If you press this today you’ll be in real trouble.’