The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (23 page)

The TV and news bulletins kept describing people who were turning up at Number 10 and I was getting gloomier and gloomier and planning a completely new life. Then at 4.45 Number 10 phoned. Would I stand by for tonight or tomorrow morning. It was a great relief. I worked till about 2 am, reading all the Post Office stuff that I had collected and just couldn’t go to sleep.

Monday 19 October

Up early and still waiting for the phone and still hearing of other people going down to Downing Street. I had completely given up hope again. Then at 10.55 am the phone rang and I was summoned.

There was a huge crowd of photographers outside and inside Bob Mellish and Lord Bowden were waiting. Finally I went in and there was Harold looking extremely relaxed. I shook him by the hand and we had a chat about the general situation and then he said, ‘By the way, I want you to take the Post Office. I am giving you Joe Slater as Assistant PMG. Then in about eighteen months time I shall be reshuffling the Government and you will be in the Cabinet.’

Then he beckoned me over to the window, and pointed into the garden of No. 11. ‘Look at that. It’s the last of Reggie Maudling’s luggage going,’ he said with schoolboy enthusiasm. He told me he didn’t know yet whether PMGs were Privy Councillors but that I would be one if it was customary.

I asked his Private Secretary to ring the Post Office and tell them I was coming. I told the press that all I could say was that I
hadn’t
been made a peer. I then went to a call box and phoned Mother, came home and after lunch telephoned the Post Office and asked for the PMG’s office. ‘What’s your name?’ asked a gruff voice. I gave it and a few minutes later came a different and oily voice: ‘Good afternoon, PMG. I think the DG wants to speak to you.’ A minute later the Director-General came on the phone, said he had a lunch appointment and would come to see me at 3 o’clock. I said I would like a car to take me there immediately.

Wednesday 21 October

At 11.30 I had to go to the Privy Council Office for a rehearsal of the ceremony of admission into the Privy Council. We were greeted by the most awful stoogey-looking people, real Crown Office – House of Lords types. Among those there were Peggy Herbison, Kenneth Robinson, Roy Jenkins, Charlie Pannell and Elwyn Jones. I asked Elwyn if he was going to be knighted. He said yes, and I said, ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

We were summoned in one by one to the Queen’s drawing room and she shook us by the hand. Then we stood in a row and the oath was administered to those who were swearing, whereas Kenneth Robinson, Charlie Pannell and I affirmed. I think they are atheists. I did it because I disapprove of a religious oath for any but religious purposes and because I wanted to pay a tribute to Charles Bradlaugh, who had fought four elections to establish this right.

We then went up to the Queen one after another, kneeling and picking up her hand and kissing it, and then bowing. I did the most miniature bow ever seen and returned to my line. When it was over she made a couple of remarks and we all walked by and shook hands. After that I had the oath of the Postmaster General administered to me. I left the Palace boiling with
indignation and feeling that this was an attempt to impose tribal magic and personal loyalty on people whose real duty was only to their electors.

Thursday 22 October

Ron Smith, General Secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, came to lunch.

We talked for nearly three hours, having lunched together in the staff cafeteria. I have met him once or twice but this was the first proper chance for a talk. He is a powerful man physically and temperamentally and one felt one was rubbing against granite. He wants me to meet the UPW Executive soon – with my wife – for lunch and an informal chat.

We had a completely informal discussion about pay and conditions. He said that the work conditions of postmen were very poor, especially in the older offices such as Mount Pleasant. All the capital investment had gone into telecommunications and the postal services were the Cinderella left to rot.

Friday 23 October

I am anxious to make some economies in the huge personal staff to offset the expenditure that the Office is going to incur in providing me with a dictating machine and modern office equipment.

I had a talk to my Private Secretary, Mr Tilling about this today and he told me that as we were in effect treated as a nationalised industry we were free from Treasury control and he was rather in favour of us organising ourselves along modern lines. There is no reason why the Post Office should be lumbering on using the techniques and filing systems of the Twenties. It is a modern communication industry and should reflect this in its practice.

I drafted a message to all Post Office staff which is to be circulated to them. This is really in the nature of an ‘Order of the Day’. Tilling suggested toning it down slightly as he thought it too heady a draught of wine. I agreed. After three or four days I am getting to like Tilling. He comes from a Post Office family – like so many people who work here – is free from the usual Civil Service rubbish and has a very dry sense of humour. His caution is also a good thing in damping down my over-enthusiasm.

Saturday 24 October

Began sorting out all the papers in my office. I intend to bombard each department with a barrage of minutes and requests and questions and see how things work. I must also begin to do some serious basic thinking about major fields of policy – like broadcasting – for which I am responsible. Meanwhile I must somehow try to dear the tons of mail which are waiting for me to handle.

Saturday 31 October

Caroline and I went to Bristol this morning and Mr Tilling came with us on the train. In Bristol we were met by the Regional Director, Mr Scott, and spent the morning with him and his staff. At the end of this talk, after hearing all his problems, I asked Mr Scott, ‘What would you like me, as Postmaster-General, to do?’ ‘Frankly, Minister, sit quiet,’ he said. For about two weeks this has been hinted at broadly to me by all the people with whom I’ve come in contact and now at least someone has had the guts to say it out loud. It was a significant comment.

Wednesday 4 November

After a quick lunch I went to the Post Office for a meeting with the staff associations. This was instead of the sherry party which is traditionally held by an incoming Postmaster-General. I had written them all a letter explaining that I preferred to have a working meeting over a cup of tea. I gave them all a copy of our manifesto, ‘The New Britain’. I told them I have presented each director in the Post Office with it as well and the meeting almost broke up with astonishment and suppressed laughter. But the reason for it is obvious and it was right to have done it.

Monday 16 November

To the Office, where I found an invitation waiting for me to a sherry party at Buckingham Palace. This is what I have been dreading and I have now got to find some way of establishing from the outset that I don’t have to go.

Harold Wilson had asked me to lunch with him at the Commons. I think he had heard from Marcia, George Wigg and Tommy Balogh that I was feeling a bit lonely and we had an hour together which allowed me to talk to him about what I was doing. His Private Secretary had queried the reports that I had decided to ban cigarette advertising and I told Harold this was pure speculation. He is not against it and was only keen that I should follow normal procedures.

I came home to change and Caroline and I went to the Lord Mayor’s banquet. It was a scene of splendid pageantry. Everyone is expected to wear a white tie but I went in a black one. The only other person in a black tie was George Brown and it established a warm bond of sympathy between us.

Before dinner Mountbatten came up and I had a long talk to him. It was the first time I had ever spoken to him and he spent the whole time name-dropping. His conversation consisted of a long list of well-known people whom he described by their nicknames and claimed to know very well. For the uncle of the Queen and an earl and Admiral of the Fleet, it was astonishing that he wanted to impress.

After that we went in to dinner and sat between Lord Chief Justice Parker and the President of the Admiralty, Probate and Divorce Division, and opposite a former Lord Mayor and Cecil King. Lady Parker, who was on
my left, is an American woman from Kentucky. During the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech she wrote me a note on the back of her menu, ‘When you are Prime Minister will you decree that there shall only be two speeches? I cannot bear another archbishop.’ I wrote back underneath, ‘By that time, you will need every archbishop you can lay your hands on.’ She laughed – and handed it to the Lord Chief Justice.

Cecil King was completely lumpen and defeatist about the
Sun
and when we both tried to persuade him that its role was to criticise the Labour Government from the left, I don’t think he understood what we meant.

As we left dinner, some City bigwig shouted, ‘Why aren’t you properly dressed?’ I didn’t hear him but he caught Caroline by the arm and repeated it to her. She was extremely angry. I had the opportunity for a word with the Lord Provost of Glasgow about the Post Office Savings Bank move.

Saturday 5 December

Surgery in Bristol this morning and home by late lunch. The telephone answering machine is an absolute Godsend. I sit in the office and hear the thing ringing and ringing and then the machine answers and the telephone stops. Without changing my number it gives me exactly the privacy that I need. I suppose one could just not answer the phone and it would have the same effect.

Monday 7 December

At the Post Office this morning an M15 man came along to interview me about a political adviser who has given me as a reference for the positive-vetting procedure in order to work at Number 10. The chap was a real pudgy flatfoot police type, and very friendly. But it is an odious business being asked to answer personal questions about someone such as drinking habits, sexual deviations and private life.

I had the first of my informal lunch meetings with thirteen people from the Building, Welfare and Transport departments. They sat round my table drinking beer and eating sandwiches and apples like a lot of middle-aged bankers on a church outing. There was not a spark of enthusiasm, imagination or excitement of any kind to be seen. I am really talent-spotting and even a person of average intelligence would shine out of that sort of group.

To the Commons and Sir John Macpherson, the chairman of Cable & Wireless, came to see me. He is a retired colonial official and his company is progressively being squeezed out all over the world. He brightened visibly when I said that I thought perhaps he might be the instrument by which Britain sold satellite tracking stations round the world. But the DG was there with a million reasons why it couldn’t be done. I have been PMG for seven weeks now and not a single bright idea has come up from below. It’s like trying to resusciate a dying elephant – tiring and almost hopeless.

Stayed at the Commons till 1 am working, voting and talking to the Seijeant-at-Arms about Commons postal, messenger and telephone services.

Monday 21 December

This afternoon we had the private office party with experimental colour TV laid on by the BBC and it went well.

This evening to the Commons to vote for the abolition of capital punishment – which was carried overwhelmingly. At last the gallows have gone.

Wednesday 30 December

I received a royal warrant giving me a quarter of a doe, shot in Windsor Great Park – one of the perks of Ministers. The only question is, what to do with it?

I did score one success today which gives me great pleasure. My scheme for using every post office as a mini art gallery has not presented the insuperable difficulties I expected and we are going ahead. It means that possibly 2,000 post offices will have pictures on display as a result of co-operation between curators of local museums and Head Postmasters. This is Arnold Wesker’s dream – or part of it – coming about.

Thursday 14 January 1965

Defence, colour television, Concorde, rocket development – these are all issues raising economic considerations that reveal this country’s basic inability to stay in the big league. We just can’t afford it. The real choice is, do we go in with Europe or do we become an American satellite? Without a conscious decision being taken the latter course is being followed everywhere. For personal reasons, I would see much attraction in an English-speaking federation, bringing in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain to a greater United States. But this is a pipe dream and in reality the choice lies between Britain as an island and a US protectorate, or Britain as a full member of the Six, followed by a wider European federation. I was always against the Common Market but the reality of our isolation is being borne in on me all the time. This country is so decrepit and hidebound that only activities in a wider sphere can help us to escape from the myths that surround our politics. I do not know yet what the answer is but I do know that the questions cannot be dodged.

Friday 15 January

To Bristol for an executive. There was a storm of criticism, both personal and political. On the personal level they complained that I had neglected the constituency since the Election, had sent the thank-you letters out late, had not sent them Christmas cards, and even that I didn’t write to everyone who
was married or promoted, in the way that some Tory MPs do using the local press to keep them informed.

This was followed by an outcry of political protest. I could understand their terrific anxieties about the aircraft industry, which could acutely affect Bristol. But it was broadened out into a general attack on the bank rate, rising income tax, foreign policy and the lot. They are unaware of the critical economic situation, or of the achievements of the 100 days and emerged as a most short-sighted group. There must be much more political education and active campaigning. All in all, a discouraging meeting. My faith in democracy was a bit shattered.