The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (2 page)

Ruth Winstone

Editor

June 2005

My family have not only had to endure the burden of a politician as husband and father, but also a compulsive diarist. Over the years they have sustained, advised and encouraged me during the ups and downs of political life, and have borne the many real hardships that my life has imposed upon them. To Caroline, Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua I am eternally thankful.

The main, huge task of transcription fell to Sheila Hubacher, my private secretary, who took it on with good humour and occasional frustration. Tony Whittome of Hutchinson has gently seen this and other volumes through from the start to finish. To both I am extremely grateful.

The main credit for the Diaries must go to Ruth Winstone, the editor of the series over a decade, whose judgement, tenacity and skill have made their publication possible and who has selected and edited this volume with little or no help from me.

Tony Benn

July 1995

One of the intriguing aspects of a diary is that it is impossible to predict what posterity will make of it. The fascination of Samuel Pepys’s diary, now over 300 years old, lies not in the political events, nor in the drama of the Great Fire rolling through London, but in the incidental insights that it gives. It is the labour trouble down at the docks, the types of river transport used, the difficulties Mrs Pepys is having with her servants, and the character of Pepys himself that make an impression in a diary that was written as a very matter-of-fact record of his daily activity.

It is much too soon to know what the enduring interest and value of Tony Benn’s diary will be to future generations, though I am sure that the names of the great and the good sitting round the cabinet table will be forgotten long before the sit-in at UCS. But the process of selecting extracts for this abridgement, from diaries spanning fifty years, has forced me to think afresh about the outstanding features of the diaries and the diarist.

There is no doubt that keeping a diary has been part of an obsession by Tony Benn with Time. Time is a currency to be spent not wasted, and as a youth he kept a time chart on which were marked the hours per day devoted to work, conversation, exercise, leisure and sleep, all of which had to equal 24. As a 35-year-old he drew up a forward diary-plan to the year 2025 (his 100th birthday); and as a Minister he recorded, usually at midnight, the day’s unfolding events. To waste time is unendurable, as the war-time diaries, written during periods of enforced idleness in the barracks, reflect.

It is the compulsion to note down the minutiae of working life, in a daily audit of Time spent, that has often exasperated those who have typed and edited the diaries; but that process in the long-run has also established the authority and the credibility of the diaries. To have kept such a record for so long is a phenomenal achievement drawing on extraordinary energy and tenacity.

Yet this self-imposed apparently puritanical regime is contrasted by a good temper, great sense of humour and quick wit which, according to Barbara Castle’s diaries, endeared ‘Wedgie’ to his colleagues, however infuriating he might otherwise have been.

And how he did drive his colleagues to fury! The later diaries candidly reveal the battles, particularly with Labour leaders Wilson, Callaghan and
Foot, who found themselves continually frustrated or irritated by Tony Benn’s dogged refusal as a Cabinet Minister and member of the National Executive to let rest uncomfortable issues about which he and others in the party felt strongly. Tony Benn’s courage in the face of adversity, if at times misplaced, is undeniable.

Having worked on the diaries for many years, my impression of the political life that they chronicle is that the Labour Party (in power for only 17 of the past 50 years despite its great talents, commitment and organisation) contains inherent conflicts that prevent it from ever wielding power effectively or for long. These contradictions (sometimes known as ‘checks and balances’) have in practice meant that every Labour leader, from Attlee to Kinnock, has been caught between the interests of the parliamentary party (of ideologically diverse MPs), the National Executive representing the Conference, and a Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet appointed by the leader. Most of the rows (quickly forgotten) between Callaghan and Benn revolved around these irreconcilable differences. But ‘splits’ have riven the Labour Party in every decade since the war as this volume demonstrates.

Attempts to change the party both by the left-wing in the 70s and 80s and the ‘modernisers’ in the 1950s and the Kinnock-Blair era have recognised this conundrum but have failed to resolve it, while supporters have got bored with the arguments and the language, and the original issues have got lost.

Tony Blair, the eighth Labour leader since the war, has made the most dramatic leaps yet in repudiating the Party’s democratic infrastructure, and its ideology; it remains to be seen how successful his strategy will be in personal and political consequences.

Alongside Tony Benn’s life-long fascination with the political process, he has maintained a vigorous scepticism of the current wisdom of the day, scepticism that continually pokes through the diary. It is well known that in December 1978, the ‘Winter of Discontent’, as it was popularly dubbed, was ‘caused’ by uncontrollable workers, and trade unions who refused to collect rubbish, bury the dead and were generally obnoxious. Yet since 1990, Denis Healey, the Chancellor from 1974–9, has publicly declared that the policies adopted by the Labour Government after the IMF ‘crisis’ of 1976 (strict wage control, penalties against employers flouting it, and huge public expenditure cuts) were mistaken. They were, he said, based upon wrong Treasury figures, were unnecessary and were bound to lead to the crisis of 1978–79 as members of the workforce tried to maintain their living standards. A few lone voices, including Tony Benn’s, stood out against the measures and questioned the assumptions. Books and PhDs have been written about the crisis; it remains to be seen whether the history books put the record straight.

Unlike the six volumes from which this abridgement is drawn, this book has dispensed with footnotes and chapter notes, and bridging passages have been kept to a minimum. It is not an academic text, or a history, and many
characters appear fleetingly: to have attempted explanations would have spoiled the impressionistic nature of the work, in contrast to the detail of the earlier volumes.

It has been a great privilege to edit
The Benn Diaries
. The frustration and exhaustion have been well rewarded. I’m sorry I shan’t be around in 2295 to re-assess them.

Ruth Winstone

Editor

July 1995

IN MAY 1940
Tony Benn was still at school, his older brother Michael had joined the RAF and his younger brother David (nicknamed ‘The Proff’) was being taught at home, due to a childhood illness. Winston Churchill had by now, with the help of Lloyd George, replaced Neville Chamberlain as war-time Prime Minister; Clem Attlee was leader of the Labour Party in a coalition Government. At this stage also, William Wedgwood Benn, Tony Benn’s father, was Labour MP for Gorton, having until 1926 sat as a Liberal MP. He was shortly to be made a Labour peer, with the title Lord Stansgate, and thus his eldest son Michael would become heir to the title.

In this first chapter, letters and other papers are included as well as early, episodic extracts from the diaries and journals of Tony Benn which only become continuous in 1963. From 1940 until 1950 Benn was continuously on the move, first as a wartime evacuee, then as a trainee pilot whose training took him to Southern Africa, and the Middle
East, and after the war as a student at Oxford and in America. In family letters at this time Tony Benn is often called James.

During the war also, his father, at the age of 63, joined the RAF for the second time in his life, and his mother, Margaret, taught at a girls’ boarding school – Blunt House – much to the delight of her young sons.

Westminster School Report 1940

Wedgwood-Benn A Age: 15.8

Greek: Place 18 No. in set 22

Does not work hard enough in school or out. He prefers to think Greek is too difficult and therefore not worth attempting to master.

French: Place 24 No. in set 25

His learning French is really a quite unsatisfactory performance. He could do very much better but it would now cost him a great effort.

History: Place 14

Lively and intelligent, as always. He is keen to get on and works hard and I think he ought to do well in the Certificate. His knowledge is patchy, e.g. he will sometimes take a political allusion which no one else in the form sees, and at other times he is ignorant of commonplace matters. He still has a rhetorical style of writing which is unsuitable for history essays.

Extract from the
Oxford Magazine
on the visit to the Oxford Union of Richard Acland
:

‘The speech of Sir Richard Acland, who was making his first visit to the Union since founding Common Wealth, enlivened the proceedings which culminated in an equal division of 82 votes for each side. The President gave his casting vote for the motion.

The Hon A.N. Wedgwood Benn proposed the motion, and began by maintaining that the prevailing popular distinction of domestic from international problems largely rested on false assumptions. The economic system at home was dependent upon the conditions of our foreign trade and both involved the fundamental issue of capital versus socialism. The natural outcome of industrialisation had been amalgamation and combination among capitalists, the essence of whose system was to restrict output and so increase prices . . . which had helped to force Germany into Nazism. He concluded by referring to the Malvern Conference, which emphasised the ethical and religious arguments against capitalism . . .

‘In reply, Sir Richard Acland Bt MP contrasted the political crisis at
home, where the Government was being conducted by an eighteenth-century aristocrat in uneasy partnership with a sorrowful ruling class, and the outside world, where the war was being won by the forces of common ownership . . . Our need was to combine political with economic democracy, since the country that first did this would lead the world . . .

‘Capitalism could not meet the crying needs of Europe for food and fuel after the war. In England it would be nonsense to raise again the objection that it ‘doesn’t pay’ when we had men, machines and materials enough to meet all our needs . . .

‘Mr C.A.R. Crosland (Trinity), ex-Treasurer, ably endeavoured to refute the argument that work is less well done by the State’s employees than the capitalist’s, though admitting that he found himself in uneasy partnership with Sir Richard Acland.’