The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (100 page)

The prosecuting lawyer said, ‘Eleven ladies have been brought before the court, having occupied a hut, which caused inconvenience and was likely to cause a breach of the peace.’ The prosecution had been brought under the 1361 Justices of the Peace Act. He described the events of 27 August. He admitted that the demo had been non-violent, but said that whether they intended violence or not was irrelevant. The prosecution was not a criticism of the ladies’ demonstration against nuclear weapons but that their action violated the rights of others over private property and the rights to privacy. This campaign would not stop; it would get worse.

He went on to say that the 1361 Act as reported in the laws of England was required ‘for good behaviour towards the king and his people’. Then he referred to Lord Justice Templeman, who had ruled that powers must exist to deal with passive resistance and minimum force. He quoted Gandhi, who
had said that ‘passive defence is only possible if it is successful’. All those who interfere with the lawful rights of others are guilty of a breach of the peace, the prosecuting counsel stated.

We had to leave at that stage. Caroline went back to London and I flew up to Scotland.

Thursday 20 January 1983

At the PLP meeting, Tam Dalyell began with a prepared speech, the gist of which was that the Prime Minister had lied to the House because she had known the invasion of the Falklands was coming and did have time to prevent it. He went on for so long that the Chairman, Jack Dormand, said, ‘Look, Tam, we all appreciate the work you have done, but do you really want to say it all now rather than in front of the House during the debate?’ So Tam curtailed it.

Jim Callaghan said there was a devastating case to be made against the Government, but added, ‘I appeal to Tam not to pursue the case that Mrs Thatcher knew about the impending invasion and lied to the House, because there is no proof of that, while there are things in the report which we can take up. It was a slipshod government, we drifted into war, and Tam will get the headlines but will it help us politically? There is a jingoistic spirit now, in contrast to 1947, when we rationed food in order to send grain ships to India.’

Thursday 24 February

To Bristol, and stayed up to watch the end of the Bermondsey by-election, which was terrible. The 11,000 majority that Bob Mellish had received in the last Election was converted to a 10,000 majority for Simon Hughes, the Liberal candidate. Poor old Peter Tatchell, who had been massacred by the press, only got 7,600 votes, but he came out of it with considerable courage and dignity.

I resolved there and then in that hotel room not to desert Bristol, where boundary changes have affected my seat, and that, when I go to Scotland on Saturday for a meeting I will make a statement saying I couldn’t accept nomination for Livingston.

Thursday 3 March

Went to the Commons in the afternoon, and Gordon McLennan, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, came to see me. We sat alone. He asked if Eric Hobsbawm had spoken to me, as he had suggested he should. Gordon thought there should be more talks between the Communist Party and the Labour Party, that the ‘Eurocommunist’ position (though he didn’t like the term) was pluralistic, and he believed everyone should choose their own road to socialism. He said that
Marxism Today
had done some interesting analytical work on Thatcherism, on the Labour Movement
of the future, on the trade unions and on the SDP-Liberal Alliance, which they took very seriously. He emphasised the importance of internationalism.

Gordon was pretty cold, actually. He said that the composition of the working class had altered, that the change in the make-up of the TUC General Council was a great threat, and that the CP now believe there should be a progressive alliance with autonomous developments under working-class leadership but not under a solely Labour Party umbrella. He thought Militant was a real danger, and disagreed with the view of one trade union leader that, ‘without Tony Benn, Militant would never have been heard of’. On proportional representation, he believed it to be a basic democratic principle that must be upheld.

Sunday 1 May

In Liverpool for a public meeting with Eddie Loyden, the ex-MP for Garston, who has been selected to fight it again. I stayed overnight in the Liverpool Atlantic Tower Hotel.

At 1.30 in the morning I woke up coughing and choking. I was desperately trying to breathe in, and it was absolutely terrifying. I went into the bathroom and began turning blue, gasping for breath and coughing. I really thought I was going to die on May Day 1983.1 won’t say my whole life raced through my mind, but I did go through the likely sequence of my death – the final choking, the weakening, the extinction. But after a while the coughing began to ease and, although my throat was very sore and I was frightened, I managed to calm myself and finally went back to sleep.

Two hours later, I was woken up by the most appalling wailing noise as if a police car was in the bedroom. I leapt out of bed again, thinking it was the hotel alarm clock, which had a note on saying it did sometimes go haywire. I looked out of the window to see if it was a police car but it wasn’t. So I went into the bathroom, where the noise was even louder. I tried to get out of the room to look along the corridor but I had locked the door, so I had to search for the key. By this time the noise was driving me crazy and I thought it must be some sort of fire alarm. Just as I got the door open, I saw the porter and the manager banging on all the doors, shouting, ‘Evacuate the building at once.’

I was in my shirt and my underpants, but I thought I could put on my clothes, and I didn’t want to lose my papers and wallet and tape recorder, so I got everything together. The manager said, ‘Go down the stairs.’ Well, it was
twelve
flights down! When I finally stumbled out at the bottom, somebody in the hall ushered me outside, where there were three fire engines but no sign of a fire. I had a little folding seat which I had put in my bag for the May Day march, so I sat there with my bags, just gazing out at Liverpool at 3.30 in the morning.

Eventually they said we could go back in. I was so exhausted by this time, I
fell asleep on the bed fully clothed, and woke up three hours later when they brought me breakfast.

Saturday 7 May

To Bristol for a very important decision-making meeting with the officers of my party, before this afternoon’s selection conference for the new Bristol South seat. I had worked out a timetable of decisions, and, to cut a long story short, I had drafted the case for staying and the case for running. Clearly Bristol East is not safe and will be less so as a result of the bitter press coverage, which, Ken Coates warned me, would be a ‘lynching party’. I put the case for cutting and running from Bristol.

The case for staying was, however, much stronger. First, I had said I
would
stay and it was a question of integrity. Secondly, by going I would be condemning Bristol East and Kingswood to defeat by assuming that they would be lost. Thirdly, by assuming they would be lost, I would also be saying that the Labour Party would lose the Election because if they were lost we couldn’t win the Election. Fourth, I did have a requirement to show leadership when things were going badly, and that carried the day. Meg Crack, Dawn Primarolo and George Micklewright, my election agent, agreed; Paul Chamberlain thought I should announce this afternoon that I was leaving Bristol.

I was driven to the Labour Club, where Bristol South delegates had gathered. Then I was shown into a room no bigger than a lavatory. Mike Cocks was there looking extremely worried.

I drew the straw first and went into a huge room where they were all sitting. I could see a few friends, but there was a sea of trade unionists who had been brought in under the Golding aegis, and women in their early sixties from the Co-op Women’s Guild. I swear many of them had never been to a political meeting before in their lives. I knew I was going to lose, so I was relaxed, made a speech, answered a few questions and left. Then Mike Cocks went in.

I left the room, wandered round and had a word with a few journalists. When Mike Cocks came out I said, ‘If you address the press, tell them I’ll see them later if they want me to.’

He said, ‘You’re assuming I’m going to get the selection.’

‘It’s obvious you are.’

Anyway, Vic Jackson, the Chairman, came out and announced, ‘The selection is for Michael Cocks.’

He and I went in and I looked at them all – it did change my attitude, being the defeated candidate. I remember thinking how awful it must have been in 1950 for Arthur Creech-Jones, a former Cabinet Minister, when I beat him. Anyway, Mike Cocks thanked them and said a word of thanks to me. I congratulated him and said that on my way here I had passed the Fighting Cocks pub and as it turned out he was.

I am glad I went. To be defeated does no harm unless you allow it to. He had worked like anything to fix the selection conference. Many of his supporters had never been before and will never attend again. But the Left will come back to haunt him.

During my press conference, Caroline arrived; it was lovely to see her. We had a cup of tea with Meg Crack and went over it all.

That was the end of a memorable day and possibly a turning point in my life, because, having been defeated for Bristol South, and facing the possibility of being defeated in the General Election at Bristol East, I would therefore be ineligible for the leadership of the Labour Party after the Election (if we lose it).

Sunday 8 May

Caroline and I had breakfast in our hotel room and read the papers. At 10 we went to the Bristol East selection conference in Ruskin Hall, Wick Road, the place where I had been carried shoulder-high by three lads after the count on 30 November 1950, and it looked exactly as it did then. Ron Thomas was there contesting the selection with me, and he is such a friend. There was quite a busy crèche with ten or twelve children being looked after by two men.

Ron knew I would beat him. It was a much smaller conference, and I made more or less the same speech. The vote was 46 to 3. Afterwards I paid tribute to Ron, who was very generous in defeat.

Monday 9 May

Someone from ‘Channel 4 News’ rang up to tell me that the Election would definitely be on 9 June. Shortly afterwards a phone call came cancelling the next NEC Organisation and Home Policy Committees.

Thursday 12 May

I went to my room in the House and cleared all the pictures, the NUM banner from Arthur Scargill, the typewriter, and so on, and put them in the car. As I left, I did wonder whether I would ever be a Member of Parliament again. I am relaxed about it, because I think the situation is so serious that socialists or representatives of socialism and of working people are being driven out of Parliament. I may have to help the Labour Movement and socialism without necessarily being in Parliament.

Tuesday 17 May

I’ve made hardly any reference to the Election campaign generally – which I suppose I should do.

The
Daily Star
came up with a MORI poll today suggesting that the Tory lead had been cut to 7 per cent. I watched the Tories’ party political broadcast, which was just like a presentation to a group of businessmen, with
pictures of the so-called Winter of Discontent, showing the Tories reducing inflation and so on, and finishing up with pictures of Mrs Thatcher. I found it informative, skilful and practical. Michael was on television pouncing the table in Lancashire somewhere, and really looking quite good. I felt the atmosphere beginning to shift towards us a bit.

Thursday 26 May

Caught the train to Liverpool, where I was driven to the NUR club for a public meeting. On the platform were Terry Fields, the Labour candidate for Broadgreen, myself, Pat Phoenix (of ‘Coronation Street’) and the actor Tony Booth, the man she lives with. Derek Hatton of Liverpool Council was in the chair. There is tremendous excitement in Liverpool because of Labour’s landslide victory in the district council elections, and it recharged my batteries.

Pat Phoenix and Tony Booth drove me to Manchester for ‘Question Time’ with Sir Geoffrey Howe and David Penhaligon, the Liberal MP for Truro. Back to Bristol in a BBC car and got to bed at about 1.15.

Monday 6 June

To the boot and shoe factory in Kingswood, where men and women were sitting in front of sewing machines which must have been sixty years old. When the hooter blows in the morning, they have a ten-minute break for tea, then at 12.30 they have an hour’s lunch, after which they work straight through to 4.45. It was sheer wage slavery. HTV and BBC were there to take a picture of me, and I was presented with a beautiful set of boots and shoes.

Tuesday 7 June

Clive Jenkins arrived in Bristol, all bouncing, to campaign for me. We went round some shopping centres. Clive hogged the mike and went along like an emperor. You would have thought he was the candidate!

Wednesday 8 June

We drove to the Brislington shopping precinct and I spoke for a moment. Caroline went to a Community Enterprise Programme, where there were a lot of young blacks who said they weren’t going to vote; she converted about seventeen of them with a few sharp words.

At Asda supermarket, the security man told me, ‘The manager has asked you to leave the premises.’

So I replied, ‘Perhaps you’d let me have that in writing.’

Nothing happened, so we carried on, and the manager came up with a heavy-looking guy and said, ‘I must ask you to leave.’

I asked, ‘Why?’, and was told, ‘Because our customers object to canvassing here.’

So I said, ‘Well, I’m walking through your shop, and if you want me to leave you’ll have to put it in writing. I’m a candidate.’

He said, ‘Well, I hope we don’t have a silly confrontation.’

‘Well, I hope we don’t either,’ I replied.

I went on walking through the shop and then left.

Bill Owen, who plays Compo in a very popular television series called ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, arrived with my old friend, Ian Flintoff, to canvass for me.