The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (112 page)

Tuesday 15 March

Took a party of business studies students from Chesterfield College of Technology and Arts around the House. Their lecturer told me with some embarrassment that politics and economics had now been transformed into business studies. He said they had businessmen in to talk about businesses.

I asked, ‘What about the trade unions?’

‘We have to tell the students that trade unions are about human resources, and their relationship with employers is discussed in that context.’

I asked about socialism, and he said, ‘We never mention that.’

Nine years after Thatcher came to power, we have a new wave of people coming through the system for whom capitalism is not only absolutely normal but the only thing they are taught about.

Sunday 20 March

Went to the AGM of the Chesterfield Party’s general committee; it had been agreed last week that we would decide whether I should put up as a candidate in the leadership election.

At the end Johnny Burrows summed up. ‘I think the balance of opinion expressed today has been pretty fair. John Prescott’s attempt to be considered for the deputy leadership was described by Kinnock as an “unforgivable diversion”. I wonder if in the next Election Mrs Thatcher will say an Election is an “unforgivable diversion”. I will not accept that we should shut up for anyone. We have a right to a General Election every five years, and it is right to contest the leadership and deputy leadership of the Party.’

Then Peter Heathfield said, ‘I nominate Tony Benn for the leadership if he is chosen by the Campaign Group.’

Of the ninety-six delegates there, eight voted against. I think probably about eighty people voted. Peter Coleman said he thought it was about three-quarters for and a quarter against and some hadn’t voted. There was a slightly nasty flavour, but you can’t expect constituency Parties to be
unanimous on these things, and the old right wing of the Party would be opposed to it.

Wednesday 23 March

I had a message to ring Jim Mortimer, who has always been cautious and thought it would be inadvisable of me to stand, but today he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it and I think you should stand.’

That played a big part in my mind, so at 5.30 I went to the Campaign Group much more evenly balanced, I addressed the group, while Jeremy Corbyn took the chair.

Then I withdrew and went up to my room and had a cup of tea. I had a call saying they’d decided to nominate me and Eric for Leader and Deputy Leader. So I went downstairs, fighting my way through a huge mass of journalists who had got wind of the fact that a decision was being taken. Margaret Beckett, Dawn Primarolo, Gavin Strang, Audrey Wise, Chris Mullin, Joan Walley were against a contest. Gerry Bermingham abstained. That was 21 in favour.

The vote for Eric as Deputy Leader was carried by 25 and only 4 against – Diane Abbott, Margaret Beckett, Gavin Strang and Chris Mullin.

I gather a great deal of pressure was put on Audrey Wise to stand for the deputy leadership but she just wouldn’t do it.

Having been doubtful, I felt more peaceful in my own mind about it. It was a collective decision. I had given the best advice I could, I had reflected the arguments for and against, and there is an excitement about doing it.

Thursday 24 March

The press was packed with reports of the decision, all beginning with ‘Labour was launched last night into another bitter row . . .’ and so on. The phones rang continuously.

Tuesday 29 March

This evening at the Campaign Group we heard that Clare Short, Margaret Beckett, Joan Ruddock and Jo Richardson had withdrawn from the group. I got angry and I said to Audrey, ‘If only you had agreed to stand, they wouldn’t have gone.’ She got quite upset; she is under considerable pressure, and of course some of the women think this is just a macho male contest and don’t like doing it this way. On the other hand, having demanded a proper say in the affairs of the Party, why shouldn’t they play their part? That’s the way I see it. The people who have withdrawn all have Front Bench responsibilities – apart from Joan Ruddock, and she’s a close friend of Neil’s, so it would be difficult for her.

Wednesday 25 May

NEC to consider the seven policy statements by the Policy Review Groups, and a historic meeting it was.

The first of the statements, ‘The Productive and Competitive Economy’, was presented by Bryan Gould. It was weak in analysis and vague in prescription, very backward-looking.

I said, if you worked in a profit-based society you couldn’t do much about the centralisation of power. Intervening in markets wasn’t any good, and I had spent a lot of my time in government trying to bribe and bully businessmen, entirely without success.

Livingstone remarked that it was ‘pure Wilson’.

Skinner said it was fudge and mudge and that unemployment would rise, particularly after the American elections. We as a party were moving towards Thatcherism.

John Smith presented the next paper, ‘Economic Equality’.

I said the trouble about this paper was that it did not recognise that there was a conflict of interest between those who created the wealth and those who controlled it. The paper declined to write off the debt that is owed by the poor to the Social Fund and pledged not to increase the highest levels of taxation above the level in Europe.

Skinner said, ‘I could be taxed higher. The papers must be clear on higher taxation.’

Blunkett argued, ‘We have got to re-establish the idea of the social wage.’

Eric Clarke agreed with Dennis Skinner.

Smith said he also agreed with Skinner. ‘But we must persuade the rich of the need for fairness, and we are going to hit the rich on the capital side.’

That paper was carried by 20 to 3, with Livingstone abstaining.

Eddie Haigh then presented ‘People at Work’.

Skinner didn’t like it because it accepted the regulation of the trace unions.

I said that Thatcher had actually identified the obstacles to her policy, which were trade unions, local government and the public sector, and she had set out to destroy them. ‘Are we going to repeal her Acts? What about using democracy, the votes of workers, to remove the boards of companies? This is a great missed opportunity.’

Kinnock said, ‘As far as Tony is concerned, Thatcher didn’t disclose her policy in advance, so why should we? The public don’t perceive themselves as being dominated by employers, and anyway industrial democracy was an anarchist idea used in the Spanish Civil War.’

The paper was carried by 11 to 4.

Next was ‘The Physical and Social Environment’, which John Cunningham described as radical, interventionist, evolutionary and international.

I criticised it because it left out the issue of nuclear power, which was central to the environment. Secondly, it didn’t mention the ownership of land, which was crucial.

The paper was carried by 20 votes to 1 (Dennis Skinner). I abstained.

Kaufman presented ‘Britain and the World’, saying, ‘It accepts the Common Market and leaves disarmament open.’

Livingstone wanted the repeal of Section 2 of the European Communities Act, which would have the effect of restoring sovereignty over legislation and statute and he moved it be included.

‘Repeal of Section 2 equals withdrawal,’ Kinnock argued. ‘The electorate rejected that in the 1983 Election, and it would wreck the economy if we withdrew.’ So he has come out as a full Marketeer.

On defence, Ken Livingstone moved an amendment that we should agree to the mutual dissolution of the NATO and Warsaw pacts.

On withdrawal from the EEC, 8 were for and 13 against, with Gould abstaining.

On repeal of Section 2 of the European Communities Act, Livingstone moved the amendment, and I added: ‘and to restore full powers to the British Parliament’. That was defeated by 16 to 7. Ken’s amendment on mutual dissolution of the two pacts was carried by 19 to 2, with Kinnock abstaining. A motion to reduce defence expenditure to the level of that of European members of NATO was defeated by 13 to 7. The question of debt was not discussed. The whole document ‘Britain and the World’ was carried by 17 to 4.

The consumer document was carried without much discussion. Hattersley then moved ‘Democracy and the Individual’.

I said, ‘In order to be constructive, I will move two amendments: that the House of Lords be abolished; and that the security services be subjected to the same ministerial and parliamentary control as the defence forces.’

Hattersley agreed.

On a vote, my amendment on security accountability and control was defeated by 12 to 8, with Kinnock against: my amendment on abolition of the House of Lords was defeated by 18 to 4.

To cut a long story short, this is the Thatcherism of the Labour Party. We have moved now into the penumbra of her policy area, and our main argument is that we will administer it better than she will. Kinnock has won because the trade union leaders don’t like the Left, but also because they haven’t any idea of what to do, they have lost confidence in themselves and think this is the best way of winning an Election. So they went along with it. But I think the arguments we put forward were strong.

Saturday 4 June

I woke up this morning, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash. There was a sheet of flame about 2 feet high stretching across the end of the bed – the electric blanket had caught fire. I leapt out and poured a cup of water over the mattress, which was beginning to burn, and threw the electric blanket out into the garden. Half an hour later it was still burning.

Tuesday 21 June

There was an astonishing report in the
Independent
this morning. Neil Kinnock had had lunch with its editorial board yesterday and had said, ‘Turn the tape recorder on, it’s all on the record’, and what he said was so muddled that, in effect, he said that his recent television broadcast attacking unilateralism as ‘something for nothing’ had not been a repudiation of unilateralist policy. Peter Shore described it as ‘the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his men to the top of the hill and marched them down again’.

Wednesday 22 June

The papers today are full of adverse comment on Kinnock’s volte-face. Nobody knows where he stands at all now.

The Executive was awful as usual. We were told about phase 2 of the Policy Review, and how they would handle the reviews at this year’s Conference. Neil said there was going to be a positive policy of consulting the constituencies and the unions, having ‘open hearing’ days, one-day regional policy conferences, and so on.

Wednesday 13 July

Drafted a notice to put in the broom cupboard in the Crypt of the Commons about the suffragette who hid there on the night of the census of 1911.

When I got to the Crypt I was told it was locked until after the Glorious Revolution celebrations, and I couldn’t get the key, so I went to see Miss Frampton in the Serjeant at Arms’ office. Miss Frampton is a most terrifying creature, a woman in her fifties, plump, determined, like the headmistress of a girls’ school. So I said, ‘Miss Frampton, I want your help.’

‘What?’ she said, with a frosty look.

I showed her my little notice, and to my amazement she was tickled pick. She laughed, and said, ‘I’ll take you down to the Crypt.’

We went down a secret staircase I didn’t know existed and we arrived in the Crypt chapel. I showed her the broom cupboard, and we closed the door, stood there surrounded by mops and brushes and hoovers and wires. I had brought six strong brass thumb-tacks and a hammer, and we hammered this notice to the back of the door. It was like a sort of midnight feast with the headmistress, and as we left I gave her a wink and said, ‘We mustn’t go on having assignations like this.’ She giggled. Anything Miss Frampton approves is OK.

I knew she was a descendant of Squire Frampton from Dorchester, and I told her that the secretary of my local Party when I was first elected to Bristol in 1950 was Edna Loveless, who was a descendant of George Loveless, one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs whom her great-great-great-grandfather had sent to Australia. She said she knew there were Lovelesses still in Dorchester. I
also told her about the Reverend William Benn, who had been ejected in 1662 from his Dorchester parish.

Monday 25 July

Our grandsons Michael, James and William, who had been out for the day with Caroline, came back for tea, and we set up three committees. The ‘London Wildlife Committee’ was chaired by Michael; James and William were deputy chairmen. We voted by 4 to 0 for more parks and by 4 to 0 for more nesting boxes for birds, and I pretended to ring Mrs Thatcher to give her their news. We had a ‘Bus Committee’, voting for more buses by 2 to 2, and for cheaper buses by 4 to 0. Michael put up a big poster and called himself ‘the Socialist Wildlife candidate’.

Sunday 4 September

I must confess I am a bit low at the moment. The coverage of the leadership campaign is poor and, despite enormous effort, no progress seems to have been made.

Saturday 17 September

Came back to London and went with Caroline to see Hilary and Sally’s new baby, Caroline Rosalind Clark Benn, our first granddaughter. Then we went for a meal in a little Chinese restaurant in Westbourne Grove.

Friday 30 September – Labour Party Conference, Blackpool

Caroline and I caught the train to Blackpool and unpacked at the Florida Apartments, a nice place between the Imperial Hotel and the Winter Gardens.

I set up the fax machine, the answering machine, the video, the typewriter, and so on.

Sunday 2 October

We walked over to the Conference, and Caroline advised me on what I should say after the result was announced. When the result came, it was appalling. My total of the electoral college came to 11 per cent. I did my best to look impassive and cheerful on the platform. I just touched Neil Kinnock on the shoulder and smiled.

Caroline and I went to the T&G party because I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to show ourselves. There were a few embarrassed faces on the so-called Left on the T&G executive who had urged me to stand and then voted for Kinnock and Hattersley. The T&G had decided not to ballot its members. I went right up to Ron Todd’s table, shook his hand, and thanked him for inviting us to the party.