The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (26 page)

At about 5 o’clock this morning Raymond Fletcher collapsed in the Tea Room and it was a horrible sight to see three people holding him down and hear him groaning. Whether it was an epileptic fit, as was rumoured, or not, I don’t know. But this is the price we pay for this late-night folly.

Tuesday 29 June

I have discovered that my instructions on stamp policy have simply not been followed. I asked to see the artists’ instructions to those who were designing the stamps of the new Post Office Tower. I discovered that the instructions remained exactly as before and that no reference at all had been made to the fact that the Queen is prepared to receive non-traditional designs. The instructions all specified as usual, ‘The Queen’s head must be a dominant feature of the designs.’ This is in strict contravention of what they know has been agreed and what I want. Unless you watch them like a hawk they simply don’t do what they’re told.

The same applied to the Battle of Britain stamps. I found that the stamps essayed by Harrison’s at my request, incorporating six stamps in one block, had not even been prepared for submission to the Palace. I asked why and they said that I had agreed to a minute which had said this could not be done. I asked to see the minute and found that there was one tiny reference to the difficulty of producing ‘multi-design’ stamps in the time. This had been slipped in in the hope that I wouldn’t notice it and would sign the minute and then it could be used to show that I had abandoned the idea. I found the letter to the Palace, rewrote the minute completely and recommended the stamps by Gentleman printed in a block of six with the Queen’s head only on the top right-hand one. As second choice I suggested a block of six in which the Queen’s head appeared in all. I don’t know what the outcome will be but now that we have agreed that rejected designs are also to be made available to the press there will be some public discussion of the stamps. It may be that this is all risky politically but I think that I am covered by the agreement reached with the Palace in March under which non-traditional designs are able to be submitted.

To the House of Commons after lunch, where I heard Harold at Questions. He is fabulously calm and cool and the Opposition simply can’t get at him.

Wednesday 30 June

To Number 10 at 10.30 to see Harold. He’d asked to see me about the appointments of the BBC and ITA governors. He wants Lord Annan as Vice-Chairman of the BBC and Asa Briggs on ITA. He thinks Professor Richard Hoggart at Birmingham might be unacceptable. But in fact, most of the hour and twenty minutes I spent with him consisted of a review of the general political situation. He feels that the decision not to have an Election this autumn despite our tiny majority has precipitated the Tory leadership crisis, which is true. There is also a row going on between Jo Grimond, who would like a Lib–Lab pact and Emlyn Hooson, Liberal MP for Montgomery, who is trying to wrest the leadership of the Liberal Party from the Bonham Carter dynasty. All this is greatly in our favour.

We had a long talk about the launching of a Vietnam initiative and he gave me the background to it.

Thursday 1 July

I told my office to ring Sir Michael Adeane. They did this, having discovered that he was at Holyrood House. When they rang he was actually with the Queen presenting my recommendations and when he came out he said she was prepared for most of them but was not too happy about the Battle of Britain stamps showing five out of the six in the block without her head. That is to say she had rejected the headless stamps.

I was anxious to do this by consent and so my office indicated to Adeane that I would be perfectly happy if she chose the ones with the head on each stamp. This will therefore be the stamp that is issued in September, but the press will be shown the stamps that were rejected. It will focus publicity on the machinery of selection and I shall explain that I make recommendations to the Palace including the Stamp Advisory Committee’s recommendations but of course the final choice remains with the Queen. Once this has happened I think it will pave the way for further moves next year with the pictorial stamps.

Wednesday 7 July

Joe Slater came in to discuss the board minutes for tomorrow with me and then Joe, Wratten and I collected Caroline and we went to the GPO Interflora TV final. It was even worse than I expected, with a half-naked Hawaiian girl dressed in plastic flowers who insisted on putting a garland around my neck, although I had specifically asked that this should not happen. The thing was intensely embarrassing and I deeply regretted having agreed to do it. Caroline and I refused the dinner afterwards at the Beachcomber with all the gang of high-livers from the BBC, Interflora and the Post Office. Hilary’s comment when I got home was the most revealing. He said, ‘Dad, you didn’t look at all authoritative, you were too eager, you were awful.’ Thank goodness for one’s children!

Wednesday 21 July

At 12.45 heard from Number 10 that the Giro was all right. It is a most interesting study of how a decision was made. Although this had been advocated by the Party in the past, nothing whatsoever had been put into the manifesto and it wasn’t until two days ago that it first came to a committee of Ministers. Although Harold Wilson knew about it – because I’d kept him informed – and the Treasury had studied the paper earlier this year, the thing was carried through in two days without ever having to go to Cabinet.

From 3.30 to 7 we had the debate on Giro and I wound it up. To my astonishment none of the anxieties of the banks were expressed by Tories and it was almost universally welcomed. I was delighted.

I stayed until about 2 am working on a speech for tomorrow’s debate on the Post Office services and kept in touch with the progress of the telephonists’ strike. It is spreading.

Thursday 22 July

The
Daily Mail
today described the Giro as ‘Benn’s Bank’. This was taken from a suggestion Jeremy Thorpe made and it was rather pleasing.

Monday 26 July

Back to the Office and at 11 o’clock Sir Martin Charteris, the Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen, came to see me about the letter I had written to the Palace following James Fitton’s visit a fortnight ago. Fitton wanted some designer-photographers to be allowed to photograph the Queen to help prepare the designs for the next series of definitive stamps.

I looked Charteris up in
Who’s Who
and found that he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst and had been a Regular Army officer and he gave his relaxation as wildfowling. He was a tall, bony, bald man in his late forties. The Office was in a panic at his arrival and the staff were hovering around like a lot of birds.

Evidently the Queen was nervous at the thought of having a lot of photographers coming. I told him as much as I could about Fitton’s idea and he suggested that Lord Snowdon should take the pictures. This suits me fine. The Queen doesn’t like sitting for photographs and was doubtful about what I had in mind. It was agreed that Charteris would check with her that Snowdon could take the first series of pictures and I will arrange that some of the designers talk to him before he goes in so that he takes the sort of pictures in which they will be interested. The Queen is so busy that she can’t have the photographs taken till October.

We also discussed the question of whether she should wear the crown or not. Brigadier Holmes said that the Garter King at Arms said she should either be wearing a coronet or have a crown over her head. I said that a stamp was not a heraldic emblem but a piece of modern design and I was
sure the Duke of Edinburgh would take the same view. Charteris rather hesitantly agreed.

I also said that I hated using the word effigy as this suggested that I was asking for a death mask. All in all it was an amusing conversation because he had come suspecting foul play and I outcharmed him. It must certainly have relieved his anxieties for I’m sure the Palace is a lot more frightened of me than they have reason to be. The Office was also afraid that I would be rude to Charteris and were surprised to find that it was all butter. Anyway he went away perfectly happy and after I shook hands with him he turned and walked straight into the door which was rather comic.

At 4 o’clock I went to Fleet Building again for the press conference on all-figure dialling. O’Brien was in a complete tizzy and the general attitude of the Department was of baring their behinds for kicks from the press about this switch. I tried to take the offensive and to explain that this was inevitable, that it would bring advantages in terms of increased capacity, technical improvements by sectorisation, and open the way for direct international subscriber dialling.

Wednesday 4 August

Tam Dalyell told me that he and Eric Heffer had just been to see Harold Wilson to propose that the nationalisation of the docks should take place in the new session, following the publication of the Devlin Report on the ports and taking precedence over steel. I gather that Harold was interested in the idea and certainly with £150 million of public money about to be poured into the docks and the present labour dissatisfaction, I believe you could win public support for such a proposal. I said I would consider writing to Harold about this because there is a strong British interest and also there is a departmental interest in that the Post Office suffers from dock delays.

Friday 6 August

Parliament rose for the summer recess after the most gruelling session that I have ever experienced. But we have proved that we can govern and I think there is a reasonable chance that the Liberals will abstain in crucial censure debates, giving us another year at our job. Quite frankly I’ve got so much on my hands in the Post Office that I really would like one more year to finish it all off. My work will be done by the summer of 1966 and I should be happy then to move on to something else.

Tuesday 17 – Tuesday 31 August

The family spent this period in Bandol. We left by train and boat and hired a car in Marseilles. We stayed in a pleasant family hotel and we enjoyed the sunshine and the complete escape from politics. I was able to get an English paper of one sort or another every day but otherwise it was a complete and very welcome break from the Post Office.

Saturday 4 September

Hilary and I set off by train this morning to Bristol where Harold was speaking tonight. We stopped at Bath and saw the Roman baths and the museum of costume and then went on by car to Kingswood where I opened a fête for the Made For Ever youth club.

Then on to Unity House, where about forty people had gathered to see me in what Herbert Rogers had described as a deputation. In fact it was a gathering of Communists and others from all over Bristol who launched a most bitter attack on government policy covering Vietnam, economic policy and almost everything else they could think of.

After that I went to the hotel and then on to Harold’s meeting. Hilary was allowed to sit in Caroline’s seat on the platform and as the platform was introduced one by one to the meeting there was a round of applause for Hilary which absolutely thrilled him.

Hilary and I went back in the Prime Minister’s motorcade to the hotel and Marcia said that Hilary could stay for dinner with Harold. At 10.45 we started dinner which went on till about midnight. Aside from Harold and Mary, Alf Richman, who is on Harold’s staff, Marcia and two Bristol trade unionists, Hilary and I were the only others there. It was a delightful evening and we had a long talk about the Speakership. Marcia suggested we make Desmond Donnelly Speaker and we had an amusing talk about the possibilities. Harold is optimistic that a Tory backbencher might be induced to do it. Before we finally parted Harold gave Hilary an autographed photograph and Hilary went to bed in seventh heaven.

Thursday 9 September

Looking back on nearly a year in office, I think probably the only contribution that I have been able to make to the Post Office is to create an atmosphere in which people with ideas have felt that this was the time to bring them forward, knowing that they would be sympathetically considered. Brigadier Holmes, who is leaving headquarters to become Director of the London Postal Region, said to me today, ‘Before I go, may I say as an individual, rather than as an official, that it has been an inspiration to work with you this year.’ It was a decent thing for him to have said and if there is any truth in it I feel I have done my job.

Sunday 12 September

To Chequers all day for the Cabinet meeting which heads of department were invited to attend. It was my first visit to Chequers and it is a beautiful house. But the whole place is like a hotel and if any reminder were necessary of the fleeting nature of high political office, this gives it. Indeed even the bedrooms were like hotel bedrooms, with little brass squares outside into which names on cards could be dropped and with basins screwed against the wall like some one-star hotel in Blackpool. One could have a wonderful time
at Chequers, handing over the whole house to somebody who knew the Elizabethan period and telling him to remove the excrescences of 1930s modernisation and restore the place to a decorative style appropriate to its age. He might at the same time add central heating, for I’m told that the house is as cold as can be and those little brassy electric fires in every room are also a real eyesore.

Sunday 26 September – Labour Party Conference, Blackpool

Peter Shore arrived in Blackpool this morning and I had breakfast with him. Afterwards, Marcia brought us the first text of Harold’s speech, which we discussed. Then we went in to see Harold. I suggested that he should try to draw a distinction between the Tory Party as the champion of those who own industry and the Labour Party as the natural ally of the managers and the people who run it. I also suggested that he should address the Liberals over the head of the Liberal MPs.

The other most interesting argument was about whether we should accept a resolution from the floor which rejected the idea that the integration of public schools could be achieved by taking state places in fee-paying schools. Dick Crossman said that if we accepted the resolution, it would kill the Public Schools Commission stone-dead. Alice Bacon said she would rather do nothing at all than do this. George Brown said that Dulwich College had 90 per cent free places and surely we couldn’t object to that.