The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (106 page)

The other unions who have supported them – the NUR, the NUS, and so on – have been marvellous. The TUC has been pathetic. The Labour hierarchy has been shown to be quite inadequate. But at grassroots level there has been a formidable development of support groups and so on. I think that is where we will see the moves coming now.

Tuesday 5 March

Chesterfield. Still have a filthy cough. I got up at 4, and at 4.50 we gathered in the pitch dark outside the Labour Club. We decided to go with Johnny Burrows to Markham colliery, and as the sun began to rise people gathered round.

All the miners and their wives, carrying banners, marched down the hill under the railway bridge towards Markham. It was an extraordinary day. Betty Heathfield was on the brink of tears and I hugged her. I felt drained by the end of it because every emotion swept through me like a gale – tragedy, wanting to weep at seeing these people who had sacrificed so much having to go back without having won; then tremendous pride that they could go back with their banners high and not give any sort of impression that they were beaten; then feelings of intense hate as a scab came forward dressed in his pit clothes and photographed them. They began shouting ‘Scabby bastard!’, and the level of hatred is frightening. Then I had feelings of hope and dignity as we stood there and applauded as they all marched into the colliery.

Later, on TV, we saw pictures from other collieries. At Maerdy, the last pit in the Rhondda, where not a single man had scabbed, they marched round the whole village and went in together. In Yorkshire Arthur Scargill
led them back and was stopped by three Kent miners, who had come up all the way to picket that particular colliery because the Kent men are still out. So they all turned back and didn’t go into work that day. The media will try to dance on the grave of the NUM, but they will make a terrible mistake.

Thursday 28 March

Brought my diary up to date. It would be so lovely if I had my own room at the Commons. I’m a nomad with a desk, and I can’t even make private phone calls – every word can be overheard.

I have a huge burden of work at the moment but it is enjoyable, and now that I’ve been squeezed out of the top of Labour politics I’m determined to do a really good job as MP for Chesterfield.

Monday 1 April

I have had five invitations to go on chat shows, because it’s my sixtieth birthday on Wednesday. I suppose when you reach sixty the journalists think they can rehabilitate you as an eccentric, lovable old character. These shows would be entirely personal, nothing to do with politics, and I would be presented as an attractive person if I was prepared to go along with it on their terms. But people at home who know me as a fighter would say, ‘God, he’s sold out.’

Tuesday 23 April

Today was the christening of Joshua’s son, William, in the Commons Crypt. Michael and little James ran around and took no notice of the service at all. When the vicar asked us to stand for a prayer, Michael could be heard saying, ‘We’ve got to stand again.’ But it went beautifully, and William didn’t cry at all. Afterwards we all went up to the Members’ Dining Room and had tea.

Wednesday 24 April

Bought the
New Socialist
, and there was the article by Patrick Seyd called ‘Bennism without Benn’ of which I had been warned. To find a socialist journal carrying an article as personal as this is revolting. Stuart Weir, the Editor, is of the Hobsbawm school, and what the article says in effect is that Ken Coates, Michael Meacher, Tom Sawyer, Stuart Holland and Frances Morrell have all completely deserted me and joined the Kinnock camp and that I am now alone with ‘Dennis Skinner and the headbangers’.

Thursday 25 April

New Left Review
carried an article by Ralph Miliband in which he patiently took to pieces the arguments of the new revisionists – everyone from the Eurocommunists to the soft Left of the Labour Party. He described how people had detached themselves from the Left and were being drawn
towards Kinnock with a view to ‘saving Kinnock from the Right’, the old argument that I heard Crossman and Castle use in relation to Wilson time and again.

I had a letter from Stuart Weir, offering me the right of reply in
New Socialist
and saying the Seyd article did not represent the paper’s view.

Sunday 5 May

In the evening I had a useful meeting with the
New Left Review
people, organised by Ralph Miliband: John Palmer, Perry Anderson (Editor of the
NLR
), Tariq Ali, Hilary Wainwright and Robin Blackburn. Caroline sat in – which was a great tribute to them.

Ralph outlined the three elements of the Left: the ultra-Left (eg the Workers’ Revolutionary Party and Militant) and some radical feminists, who were intransigent; the Hattersley to Hobsbawm Left (including Frances Morrell and possibly Ken Livingstone), who lean towards the leadership; and the independent socialist Left, the Bennites inside and outside the Labour Party, who wanted socialism without rocking the boat. Ralph wanted to see this last element strengthened.

He said Bennism could be summarised as ‘the need for a democratic revolution’ in Britain to tackle corporate power and the class structure. But how?

John Palmer was reminded of 1962–64 when Wilson had been able to co-opt the old Left because it had not prepared its position. Kinnock was attempting to do the same thing. John’s fears for the next Election were that a Labour or Labour/SDP government might come to power and then fail, and that would produce a strong backlash of the Right, currently held in check by Thatcherism itself. He didn’t agree entirely with me on the EEC but did agree on the question of NATO.

He continued, ‘We must arm the Left with all sorts of weapons, weapons which may have to be used even against a Labour government. The defeat of the miners’ strike was a blow to the Left, and helps to explain the shift towards Kinnock. The Left has to utilise its resources to mount a massive and serious anti-Thatcher campaign, because there is no attack on capitalism by Labour at the moment.’ He said there would be a hard fight inside Parliament of fifty to sixty new Labour MPs who must tell the next Labour Government, ‘We will not support what you propose – neither the acceptance of Cruise nor any attacks on the working class.’

Robin Blackburn believed we must attack British capitalism and not Thatcherism, which was the worst form of capitalism we’d ever had but had meant great success for the City. We must examine the empowerment of workers and the democratisation of British capitalism.

We discussed the accusation of ‘boat-rocking’. John Palmer said that rocking the boat couldn’t be avoided; there shouldn’t be a leadership contest but there was a need for a clear challenge to Kinnock’s position.

So from that beginning we decided to call ourselves the Independent Left Corresponding Society (ILCS) and meet monthly. It is what Ralph had in mind as a ‘think tank’, and I think we all enjoyed it. There has been a major political shift and we have to accept it without bitterness. The ‘new realists’ have been propelled towards Kinnock partly by the defeat of the miners and the local authorities, partly by the fact that if Kinnock becomes PM he will have a lot of patronage to offer and their own careers will be promoted. The media have been making it tough for the Left. The so-called Bennites are trying to find a new base from which to advance, rooted in the trade union movement and the constituency Parties.

Friday 19 July

Train to Chesterfield. As I went to get some tea a woman asked me if I was Tony Benn. She said, ‘I’m Gareth Peirce.’ Well, Gareth is one of the solicitors who has been defending the miners on trial for rioting at Orgreave, and we talked and talked. She told me the trial was of tremendous historical importance. At the beginning, the prosecution had said it was one of the gravest cases of riot in Britain, but the defence counsel had so successfully cross-examined the prosecution witnesses that it had gradually emerged, from the clear evidence of video recordings and photographs, that the police account was flawed.

She said that from reading the
Public Order Tactical Operations Manual-
the police training manual – detailing the use by the police of short and long shields, of mounted police and truncheons, it was clear that unarmed civilians were being exposed to paramilitary tactics unauthorised by common law. I am going to raise it in the House on Monday. It was a military operation without doubt – nothing to do with protecting law and order. She is going to get me extracts of the manual used at the trial.

Tuesday 1 October – Labour Party Conference, Bournemouth

I dropped from first to third place in the NEC elections, which is almost inevitable. Blunkett came first. The only people whose vote went up were Dennis Skinner and Jo Richardson. No one took much interest really, and nor did I, because as the day progressed it became more and more apparent what a misery it is to be in the Labour Party.

We had the health service debate, and Margaret Vallins spoke. She stood for the women’s section of the NEC and got 59,000 votes – about 10 per cent of the whole – which was amazing.

Kinnock’s Conference speech, and I sat through an hour and a quarter of it. The first part was very clever – hard, harsh Kinnock mocking the Government, stressing the importance of winning. But he ended with a violent attack upon Militant in Liverpool saying, ‘Implausible promises don’t win victories . . . you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle around a city handing out redundancy notices to its
own workers. You can’t play politics with people’s jobs . . . or their homes.’ He spoke as if the Liverpool councillors wanted to fire people, when actually they are themselves victims of government policy. It was all part of his strategy, going back to 1983, to kill off any left-wing challenge by appealing for unity and on that basis to get a right-wing NEC and accuse the Left of being divisive. As a result of this strategy, power over policy-making has been passed to the Shadow Cabinet, a lot of charters (which have no policy status) have been issued, and the policy and the work of the International Department have been wound up.

Kinnock’s speech led to a walkout by Eric Heffer and shouting from Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn. Kinnock has released the hatred of the Tory press against his own people in the middle of a struggle, in the hope that he can pick up the ex-Labour voters who supported Owen, knowing that real socialists and the rump of the working class have no alternative but to vote for him. He is pioneering a presidential style of government which is quite foreign to our own traditions.

I left because I couldn’t bring myself to stay after that. I saw a woman delegate crying, and I put my hand on her shoulder and she said, ‘I can’t understand what they’ve done to our Party.’ I told her not to worry, and I began to cry – not at what was happening, which I’ve seen before, but at this woman’s distress. It absolutely shattered her.

It has been a historic day in the Party. What Gaitskell attempted in 1960 has been done again – an attempt to destroy the Left, the Conference and the unions. Some people will want a candidature against Kinnock next year, but he would smash his critics and crush the Left, probably even expel it. On the other hand, we don’t have any obligation any more to go along with what is said, and I think it is perhaps the restoration of the freedom to speak out that is more important.

Wednesday 2 October

Debate on the miners’ amnesty resolution. Arthur Scargill made an exceptionally good speech to the Conference.

Alan Hadden, who was chairing the Conference, managed to dredge up two delegates who were against the miners, and he also called Basnett, Gavin Laird and Eric Hammond against. He didn’t call a single pro-NUM union leader such as Ray Buckton, Jimmy Knapp or Ron Todd.

It was an extraordinary debate – memorable for the fact that Eric Hammond described the striking miners as ‘lions led by donkeys’. It caused an uproar in the hall, and just before Kinnock was due to wind up the debate, delegates were so angry that they stood up and just pointed at Ron Todd – like iron filings aligning themselves around a magnet – shouting. ‘Todd! Ron Todd! Todd! Ron Todd!’ so Hadden had to call him.

Ron made a very powerful speech. He was extremely angry. In response to Hammond he said, ‘I am an animal lover. I prefer donkeys to jackals.’ A
good response, but it might have been better to have left it without reciprocal abuse.

Kinnock ended the debate. He spoke much more softly than yesterday, but his speech was really a denunciation of the whole strike, not just the resolution. He attacked the miners’ leaders for the whole way in which they had conducted the campaign. A horrible speech.

I was told later that miners in the gallery were crying. However, the resolution was carried by 3,542,000 to 2,930,000, but it did not get a two-thirds majority, and that is the comfort Kinnock will cling on to.

We came later to the local-government debate, and David Blunkett was to move the NEC statement calling for reimbursement of councillors who had suffered financially through rate-capping legislation. There he was, this Christ-like bearded blind man, standing on the rostrum appealing to Derek Hatton to withdraw his Liverpool resolution asking for industrial action in support of councillors ‘not prepared to carry out Tory cuts’.

‘Will you do that? Will you do that, Derek?’ He stood there waving his hands into the darkness.

So Hatton, who is a bit of a smart alec, ran towards the rostrum in his neat suit, got up on to the rostrum and said, ‘Yes, in the interests of unity, Liverpool will withdraw its resolution.’

There was an explosion of applause. I believe the right wing were angry with Blunkett for having done that.

Thursday 9 January 1986

Michael Heseltine resigned from the Cabinet today over the Westland affair, giving as his reasons that the Prime Minister had refused to allow the matter to be discussed and had told Ministers to clear any statements with the Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong. No doubt Armstrong himself suggested that in order to protect the PM from this continuing public row.