The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (15 page)

The press were still pouring round the building as we left it, catching us with movie cameras as we walked away. But news of the compromise had reached them and we were able to be all smiles.

Tuesday 29 March

Went to drinks at Mervyn Stockwood’s – first time I have seen him since he was made Bishop of Southwark. He looked awfully pale and drawn. He doesn’t enjoy good health. Had a long talk with Stephen Spender before I realised who he was. Also met John Betjeman, whom I felt I knew well through TV. He is terribly funny and, with that inane toothy grin, he talked about ‘friends of friendless churches’, and spoke bitterly about this and that bishop or rural dean who had ordered the closure of some ‘lovely, Victorian, Gothic monstrosity’.

Afterwards persuaded Tony Crosland to come and have a meal in a pub and back for a drink. He is the most complex character and it takes half a bottle of whisky and immense tact to penetrate his susceptibilities. We had bucketfuls of self-analysis but finally did have a reasonably intelligent discussion about rebuilding the Labour Party and what Hugh should do now. I felt it had done something to bridge the gulf between us over the last few years.

Saturday 9 April

At home all day and David Butler to tea. South African Prime Minister, Dr Verwoerd, shot. The South African crisis is deepening.

Friday 6 May

Up early and by taxi for Princess Margaret’s wedding. It was a glorious, hot summer day and we drove down Constitution Hill and past the Palace, down the Mall where the crowds had been sleeping all night and through
the Admiralty Arch into Whitehall. The Guards in full dress and the general air of expectancy with all the decorations, and the streets empty of cars reminded me of the 1937 Coronation. We were terribly early and sat on the terrace of the Commons until we walked over to the Abbey.

Every pillar in the Abbey had a closed-circuit TV screen and during the service we saw ourselves singing a hymn lustily. We also saw most of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and other visiting celebrities. Afterwards we had lunch at the Commons and I went off to Bristol to canvass in the local elections.

Tuesday 10 May

Met Jim Callaghan on the bus to the House of Commons. I think he has got his eye on the job of Shadow Foreign Minister. He let slip some remarks which made this very clear. The colonies are shrinking and he doesn’t want to shrink with them!

Saturday 11 June

The Party is in a deplorable state, Woodrow Wyatt’s speech attacking Frank Cousins as ‘the bully with the block vote’ has disheartened members.

Afterwards drove to Oxford for the Nuffield dance. Jim Callaghan was there. Caroline has almost convinced me that he should be the new Deputy Leader.

Wednesday 29 June

Parliamentary Party meeting this morning to pass a vote of confidence in Gaitskell. The really important thing was the fact that all the trade unionists who spoke in support of the motion were strongly critical of Gaitskell and particularly attacked his assault on Clause 4 and ‘his little coterie of friends’. Manny Shinwell gave a tragic performance of senile egomania and Sydney Silverman really lost his grip. Finally we passed a vote of confidence in Hugh.

This evening we debated changes in the homosexuality laws. Kenneth Robinson opened and I voted with the ninety-nine who wanted to legalise homosexuality over the age of twenty-one.

Wednesday 6 July

Nye Bevan died this afternoon.

Tuesday 12 July

This evening to the dance at the American embassy. There were 700 people there and we stayed until dawn was breaking. I haven’t danced all night since I was an undergraduate. It was without exception the most fabulous party I have ever attended.

There were artificial trees with real fruit wired on to them. By using
enormous plastic bags, four artificial swimming pools had been created in the garden which had been filled by the London Fire Brigade. Between and around them were gigantic candelabra wired for gas; from these tremendous candles burned continuous jets of flame.

The guests were the establishment
in toto.
We danced round beside the Armstrong-Joneses and saw the Queen Mother and Bob Boothby gazing at each other rather balefully across the champagne bottles. R.A. Butler, Lord Salisbury, the editor of
The Times
, David Niven, several dukes, Alf Robens, Frank Soskice, Osbert Lancaster, Joyce Grenfell, the Gaitskells, etc. etc. Name them and they were there. We had no really close friends but knew an enormous number slightly. Though we enjoyed every minute of it, we felt a bit like the Roman senators must have felt the night before the Huns and the Goths arrived to sack Rome. Such splendid extravagance carries with it an inevitable taste of decadence.

Wednesday 24 August – USSR trip

Boat train from Liverpool Street to Harwich where we caught the
Prinses Beatrix
to the Hook of Holland. The Moscow coach was in the siding – heavy with polished mahogany, bright brass, thick curtains and plush stuffed decoration.

Dinner in the wagons-lits as we passed through Utrecht and to bed as the train moved into West Germany. A Thermos, some Nestea, condensed milk in a toothpaste tube and saccharin provided that comfortable feeling of home as we headed for the Iron Curtain. We are the guests of the Inter-Parliamentary Group of the Supreme Soviet.

Thursday 25 August

Woken at 2.30 am by East German police and dozed till 7 when the train went through shining, flashy, opulent West Berlin towards the East Sector.

Tonight we went to bed in our clothes and at 11.30 the Polish police and soldiers called as we passed into the Soviet Union. At midnight two Red Army soldiers, a customs official, a girl from pest control, and an Intourist girl came in. Changed money at Brest and the wheels changed.

Woke late and had breakfast of ham and eggs and tea in the Russian restaurant car.

At 2 in Smolensk and rolling across western Russia all afternoon. At each level crossing stood a girl or woman holding a yellow flag in one hand and a silver or tin horn in the other. They were symbols of patient, loyal Russian people doing their duty and watching the great technology of Soviet power as it went on its way.

At 8.50 met by Nicolai Kutchinsky, who is to accompany us and translate for us. We went to the Sovietskaya Hotel and then drove round Moscow up to the Lenin Hills and on the Metro. We are definitely getting VIP treatment and will get on well with Kutchinsky. Comment on Russian society by him:
‘I didn’t want TV but my mother-in-law and the kids did. There’s too much violence and shooting with all the revolutionary and wartime films.’

Breakfast in our room and drove to see new housing development Big posters said ‘Eat More Cheese’.

To Lenin’s office and apartment and then to the cathedral in the Kremlin, the Armoury Museum and the Palace of the Soviets. It was all very beautifully restored and well kept.

Lunch at 4.30 at the hotel, by which time we were really knocked out. Kutchinsky is very anti-Molotov and we discussed the 20th Congress.

To the Park of Rest and Culture to see Obratsov Puppet Theatre. Lots of English and Americans in the audience. Dinner 11.30-12.30 in hotel; big lumpen Mongolian delegation at next table. Band playing in 1930 style with young male singer singing ‘I Love Paris’. Discussed China, de-Stalinisation, Hungary and British colonialism. Kutchinsky is very agreeable and ready to talk frankly.

Monday 29 August

With Alexander Prosorovsky of the Planning Department to see a housing research project. Prefabrication is going ahead and we also heard about the operation of ‘Comradeship Courts’, which operate in blocks of flats and neighbourhoods to check bad behaviour by children, nagging wives, unfaithful husbands, etc. Sunday School has nothing to teach them!

This afternoon with Alexander Sirotkin to see the Moscow Metro, which is extremely impressive.

Russians are anti-American, to us anyway. Worried about China, pro-Macmillan, anti-Stalin and said the BBC is clever propaganda but its Russian Service is run by 1917 émigrés who are ignorant, or later émigrés who are hostile.

Tuesday 30 August

Woken at 5.45, breakfast at 6, and porter comes to collect baggage at 6.15. Caroline’s in her nightie and I’m in underpants. No possibility of making myself understood. Porter withdraws and man in raincoat and trilby hat appears to remove baggage. He rings on the phone and has long talk in Russian to operator who understands him, but it doesn’t help. I speak to girl with help of phrasebook but page flips over and I read the phonetic translation of phrases that have no meaning like ‘I’m sorry your mother has been ill’ and ‘How many hectares of wheat are there on this collective farm?’

To Moscow Airport and by plane to Sochi, where we had a suite and balcony overlooking the incredibly beautiful Black Sea.

In a speedboat along the waterfront to see the enormous palatial sanatoria built by the trade unions for the workers. In the evening to the Opera with a stage the size of La Scala to hear
Traviata
sung by the Siberian Opera Company. It is all so fabulous and surprising.

Supper from 11 to 2 am in our room and a long and most intimate political talk which represented a complete breakthrough in personal relations. From then on we were on first-name terms.

Wednesday 31 August

Bathed before breakfast

A couple of hours of talk over supper in our room again: Kutchinsky says there are few political prisoners in Russia today and it is much easier than under Stalin.

‘I would open the frontiers and prove Russia is confident of its system.’

Then he added, ‘Collectivisation was a tragic error and Stalin a disastrous leader. If Lenin had lived it would have been very different. Khrushchev is absolutely honest and straightforward and gets no special privileges.

‘The Labour Party needs discipline, should abolish the block vote, should know who it intends to represent, especially white-collar workers and technical people, and must be more concrete. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is a protest but not a practical idea. It is isolationist, anti-patriotic and dishonest.’

Friday 2 September

By boat across the lake to breakfast in a restaurant and then drove through the mountains back to Adler Airport. Kutchinsky explained how the constitution of the USSR worked and how the CP representatives really controlled every organ at every level.

We flew to Moscow via Stalina and didn’t get to bed till 2.30 am.

Saturday 3 September

We try unsuccessfully to telephone the British Embassy. The operator says it has no phone. Kutchinsky says it is very stupid and compares it with the refusal to publish a street map of Moscow as a hangover from Stalin.

To the Bolshoi Theatre to see
Ivan Sussanin
by Glinka – magnificent patriotic opera.

Sunday 4 September

To the Tretyakov Art Gallery: lots of socialist realism and rather dull.

Boris Krylov collected us by car for dinner at his flat. Mme Krylova and Krylov’s mother-in-law live with the family – very crowded. Great family smiles and jokes and tremendous meal with enormous good will all round. They are so affectionate yet serious, good-humoured yet courtly and we felt immediately at home with them. Of course they retain the pre-revolutionary attitude to the outside world and look forward to the relaxation that they know is coming. But what a terribly tough forty years they have had.

Off to the Bolshoi again with Nick. But only stayed for one act of
The Taming of the Shrew
. Long talk over coffee at the hotel.

Monday 5 September

At 6 o’clock to the Praha Restaurant for a private dinner with Jacob Paletskis, a full member of the Central Committee. He is a rank-and-file leader and an old-guard Bolshevist. For an hour at dinner we have the most cordial talk, exchanging pictures of his grandchildren and our children, and I thought it was all going to evaporate like that. Then, all of a sudden switching to Russian, he turned to Kutchinsky, who later translated, ‘Gospodin [Comrade] Wedgwood Benn, you have a very progressive record, except on one question, the question of Hungary.’ It was a direct head-on challenge that I could ignore or take up and I decided to take it up. For an hour and a half we had a fierce argument through Kutchinsky.

Still, the conversation ended with many expressions of friendship. Paletskis pinned a medal on my lapel from the Supreme Soviet and I thanked him for the other presents of perfume, records, books and the Sputnik music box.

To the station to catch the Red Arrow to Leningrad. As the train pulled out, Caroline with a new bouquet waved goodbye and we settled into the comfortable sleeper to drink tea and eat biscuits while the bells of the Kremlin rang through the radio in our compartment, followed by the ‘Song of Moscow’, which traditionally followed them. As usual we had another talk with Kutchinsky.

‘I hope that there is no war,’ he said, ‘because the Russian people have suffered so much and have worked so hard for so long that it would be very tragic indeed if they were, at the last minute, denied the fruits of their sacrifice.’ And as he left he turned and said to me, ‘You are an idealist underestimating the forces against you and you will be due for disappointments.’

Tuesday 6 September

Early this morning the woman brought us caviare and tea to wake us up. Met at Leningrad Station, and to the Astoria Hotel.

For a couple of hours we drove round Leningrad with an Intourist guide, who pointed everything out. We saw the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, the Kirov Stadium, the Aurora, and drove up and down the main streets. At lunch Kutchinsky said I should have been in the Tory Party, would have made better progress, and could have done more for my country. I said that he should have stayed an optical engineer – which was his job before he became a research worker in foreign affairs.

Just after midnight Nick and I decided to go for a walk and Caroline went up to her room. About thirty seconds after we had left the hotel we heard an enormous explosion behind us, turned and saw a column of flame rising
thirty feet into the air right outside the front door of the hotel. We rushed back and saw a truck on its side blazing. Thinking of the man in there frying, and wondering if there was more petrol still to explode, we forced our way round it and into the hotel. Our room overlooked the site and Caroline, hearing me bang on her door, thought it was someone to say that I was in the accident. We watched the truck blaze until the fire brigade put it out with foam, and the ambulance – complete with a doctor, as is usual in Russia – had arrived. It was then that we discovered that no one had been killed. The truck had been stolen by a fifteen-year-old boy and it had skidded and turned over, leaving him a couple of seconds to get out before it blew up. Flash-photographers and police gathered, then the truck was towed away.