The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (35 page)

We went on to discuss the sort of people who were pro-monarchy. He said, ‘Well, if you go to the East End they wave their little flags and they are very keen on the monarchy.’ I said this sounded to me like a lot of Labour voters. But, he admitted, when people got cars and a bit more middle class, they weren’t interested in or they didn’t want to show their affection for the monarchy. I didn’t disabuse him of this idea.

He then said he thought the Ombudsman should have been put into the royal household in order to make the monarchy seem closer to the people and to represent the nation. I said I thought this was nonsense. The Duke said that he acted as a sort of unofficial ombudsman and I think he does.

We went on to discuss ceremonial and the effect on it of television. He said that television really killed all ceremonial and I explained that was why Bessie Braddock would never appear on television. I don’t think he much liked the comparison of Bessie Braddock with the Queen, though I am not sure there isn’t something of a parallel.

I tried to point out that the monarchy was linked in many people’s minds with a lot of reactionary forces. I said that during my peerage case I had had letters from many people who said that they had left Britain because they felt that the top jobs in industry or politics were reserved for those who had inherited their positions and that whenever I had tried to deal with the reform of the House of Lords I was always told you couldn’t do this without threatening the monarchy. This sounded like loyalism, but top people were really leaning on the monarchy to prop themselves up.

He seemed rather shaken by this and he was very critical of our plans to reform the Lords. He said they were based on prejudice rather than on thinking and we ought to have an elected second house. I said, ‘Well, yes, I rather agree with you but as you know we haven’t got a very radical government. We are just doing what the British always do – adjusting – but we are getting rid of hereditary peers and I think that’s quite right. If you do want a second chamber, I would rather get ERNIE, the Premium Bond machine, to give you one than have the hereditary House of Lords.’

That was how we left it. It was the first time I had had a proper talk with him and I felt as if he were a Tory MP, which is just about what he is. Altogether it was a revealing discussion: he is a thoughtful and intelligent person.

I caught the helicopter home and in the evening we all came down to Stansgate. It was quiet and Melissa and Joshua were excited, and Hilary very obligingly slept downstairs so that they wouldn’t be frightened.

Thursday 14 March

To the House in the evening and settled down to do my boxes. At about 12.10 am there was a division, and while I was in the Division Lobby, George Brown called me over.

‘You’re a member of the Cabinet, come here,’ he said. Then he told me he had just heard that Harold and Roy had decided to close the gold market in London tomorrow. He said he had not been consulted and it was an absolute scandal and didn’t I think so.

I said, ‘Are the Americans closing theirs?’ He said he didn’t know and I said that this would be the thing that would interest me.

George then called over Dick Crossman and said, ‘Did you know this?’ Dick said yes, and George blew up.

After the division, George gathered Tony Crosland, Dick Marsh, Michael Stewart, George Thomson and others in his room. What had happened was that Harold had been at a meeting all evening and had gone
to the Palace for a Privy Council to get this Proclamation out to close the gold market, and George had not been told. While we were all sitting there, George picked up the phone and got through to Harold and exploded. He shouted at Harold and said it was intolerable and there were a lot of discontented Ministers. All we could hear at our end was George saying, ‘Will you let me speak, Christ, Christ, will – you – let – me – speak. Now look, look, will you let me speak,’ and so on. Then we heard George say, ‘Now, don’t say that: don’t say in my condition. That may have been true some other nights, but not tonight.
Don’t say in my condition
.’ It was obvious Harold was saying he had tried to contact him but that George was drunk. I don’t know whether or not he was drunk, because you can’t always tell.

George continued to shout at him and Harold must have asked, ‘Who’s over there?’ George told him and Harold said he had no right to call an irregular meeting of Cabinet Ministers, a cabal, and so on.

Finally Michael Stewart took the phone and said, ‘Now, look, Harold, you must understand we are worried and we have just heard this. We really think we ought to have a meeting.’ Harold than apparently said, ‘Come to Number 10,’ because Michael asked, ‘Don’t you think it would be wiser if you came over here?’ George picked up another phone and said, ‘Send my car and my detective to bring the Prime Minister to the House of Commons,’ which didn’t help.

There was another division and I went on to the Front Bench, told Fred Peart to be available and told Dick Crossman, who said he was busy and anyway he knew all about it Barbara Castle was tied up in the all-night session on the Transport Bill. Finally, at 1.30 am, I went over to Number 10 with George Thomson. By this time Ray Gunter and all the other Ministers I have mentioned had been gathered, as had Peter Shore, who had been to the Privy Council at the Palace.

George shouted and Harold insisted he had tried to phone him and George said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

Harold said, ‘I tried for an hour and a quarter.’

‘I do not believe it.’

Harold got rattled and rather irritated and said, ‘I am not going to be called a liar.’

George repeated that he didn’t believe it and then demanded that Harold’s Private Secretary, Michael Palliser, tell him how long the Prime Minister had tried to contact him. Michael Palliser, of course, wouldn’t answer and frankly, I don’t know whether Harold had tried or not. Maybe Harold did think George was drunk; he was certainly behaving as though he were. In the end George stood up and shrieked and bellowed and shouted abuse as he went round the table, then left the room.

Apparently, President Johnson had been closeted with his advisers all day, and in the course of the afternoon there had been a message from the Americans asking us to dose the London gold market. We agreed as long as
we were able to present the situation as done at the request of the Americans. I think we probably lost £150–200 million in reserves today and Harold thought if we hadn’t closed, we would have lost £4–500 million. We are on the eve of the other devaluation that Cecil King predicted.

Harold and Roy had been going over this all evening, with meetings starting at 6, until finally at 11 they had all gone off to the Palace for the Privy Council and the order had been made. Tony Crosland and Michael Stewart were very niggled about not having been consulted. I said I didn’t think a post-mortem would help and I wanted to know whether there would be a statement or not.

Then Dick Crossman came on the phone and said the news was all round the House and there would have to be a statement. At 2.15, Robert Armstrong, Roy’s Private Secretary, began dictating a statement, which came at about 2.45 am. We went on arguing and arguing. By this time the press had gathered around Number 10 with flashing cameras.

Harold said that George would have to apologise or go. Peter said, ‘Now, calm down. You did very well until you lost your temper with George. Just calm down.’ Harold was very overstrained.

Roy’s behaviour was very detached and strong and rather impressive. He’s got his eye on the main chance and thinks Harold will destroy himself and that he, Roy, will then take over.

Afterwards Peter and I walked back to the House together. I talked to people; Judith Hart and I made a list of Ministers we thought would stick by Harold in a crisis.

George, meanwhile having stomped out of Number 10, sat ostentatiously on the backbenches and said he was now a backbencher. Of course, everyone left in the Chamber, including the Tories and the lobby, could see this and there he was shouting at everybody that he’d resigned. He behaved so disgracefully that under no circumstances should Harold take him back as Foreign Secretary. But I expect that in the morning Harold will think, ‘Oh well, if George goes, there will be trouble on the backbenches,’ and that’ll be an end to it.

I talked to Ron Brown just before leaving, he said George was convinced that Harold had lied to him. George had checked all the switchboards to find out if any messages had been left for him and claimed that there had been none. So he was bitter as hell.

At 6 am I came home. I gave Tony Crosland a lift and he hotly denied that there was any alliance to replace Harold. He and Roy were at daggers drawn and there were great disagreements. But I’m sure Tony, in his heart, thinks that Harold will go. Tony took an optimistic view of our economic situation and didn’t take too grim a view even of the gold panic. But with the Bank Holiday, the Cabinet split, gold suspended, and the pound in the front line to the dollar, I should have thought the possibility of the crisis which we predicted a month ago is very real.

When I got home I began dictating my diary. It’s now 8 am on Friday 15, and I’m due back in the office at 9. But I must keep my diary up to date because if the Labour Government falls, as I now think quite possible, then at any rate I shall have documented the circumstances.

Friday 15 March

Just before I went to bed I heard that George Brown had resigned and that Michael Stewart had been put in his place. So that is the end of George Brown’s tenure at the Foreign Office. It began with a threatened resignation because we didn’t devalue and ended with a real resignation arising out of the consequences of devaluation. What George will do now is anyone’s guess. He is a person of extraordinary intellect, courage and ability, but his instability is such that it is impossible to have him in a government. I wonder how capable he is of causing trouble from the backbenches. His resignation now as Foreign Secretary also raises the question of his deputy leadership of the Party. It is a major political tragedy.

Thursday 21 March

In the evening Caroline and I went up to Tommy Balogh’s party. I had a long talk to Mary Wilson, who is very miserable, believing that if anything went right with the Government in the future, Roy would get the credit and Harold would get the blame. I think she may be right as far as the press is concerned. But there’s no harm in bolstering her up and I tried to.

Wednesday 3 April

My forty-third birthday and the children came in with their presents in the morning, which was very sweet of them. But it was an awful day for a birthday because I had to go in very early and I was extremely tired, having been to bed so late.

Immediately after lunch Harold came down to my room and we talked for an hour. I pressed my claim for the leadership of the House if there was a reshuffle but he wanted someone who was a bit more genial and jovial and less worried-looking than me, someone with a trade union background who would drink in the bar all the time and be jolly. This was a requirement. So he’s going to appoint Fred Peart.

Then he asked me, ‘Were you serious about wanting Education?’ (I had told Marcia this when rumours of a reshuffle were rife.)

‘Yes, providing I could have an Education Act and make the comprehensive-schools thing a really living issue.’

He said he was thinking of Ted Short for it and that Denis Healey had wanted it. He went on to talk about his Inner Cabinet and I said I certainly didn’t expect to be excluded for the rest of this Parliament. He had said that this Cabinet would be the first real ‘Wilson Cabinet’, that would last right through to the next Election. This of course is all bunk. I told him I didn’t
much fancy being outside the ‘real’ Cabinet and I raised the question of Peter – he is keen to move Peter from the DEA. I said I thought this would be disastrous; after all the attacks on Peter it would be quite wrong to move him. But Harold replied that Barbara had wanted to take over the DEA and Ray won’t move from Labour.

He calmed me down and the Education thing was left as a possibility.

Monday 8 April

The National Executive Home Policy Committee gathered to consider a huge wodge of papers. George Brown arrived late and rolling drunk, and Alice Bacon, who had taken the chair, handed it over to George. He behaved outrageously and it was impossible to make any progress. Everybody was very courteous about it but the fact is he’s a damned nuisance and I don’t see any future in politics for him. I always knew that he would either get a new lease of life after his resignation or break up. I think he’s breaking up.

Saturday 13 April

All day doing my constituency letters. Caroline worked in the British Museum. In the evening we went to the new Wimpy Bar at Notting Hill Gate and then watched television.

Monday 15 April

Caroline went to Trafalgar Square for the Aldermaston rally.

Sunday 21 April

Lazy start. It was a lovely day and Caroline sat in the garden. I mowed the grass and scrubbed the basement floor.

The news today is dominated by Enoch Powell’s speech in which he raised the racial issue by saying that he thought this country had gone mad to admit so many immigrants and that it was like adding a match to a pile of gunpowder. Enoch is of working-class origins; he got a scholarship to a grammar school, did very well academically, became a professor at twenty-four and a brigadier at twenty-nine. But he has never been accepted in the Tory Party. He wasn’t offered a job, for example, in the City after he left the Treasury with Peter Thorneycroft, and this obviously burned very much into his mind. He has got to have somebody to look down on and this is the way he does it.

Monday 22 April

Enoch Powell was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet this morning by Heath in a great and rather well publicised effort to reassert his leadership.

Wednesday 24 April

The press is still full of the repercussions of Enoch Powell’s speech just before
the weekend. Yesterday 200 dockers came to the House of Commons and shouted obscene things at Labour MPs and called Ian Mikardo a ‘bloody Chinese Jew’. He recognised some of the East End Fascist leaders among these guys. The white trash have picked this speech up. It has suddenly liberated them and there are strikes all over the place in support of Enoch Powell. He really has opened Pandora’s Box. I should think Enoch Powell will get an enormous vote in his constituency, but from the Government’s point of view the situation could be very dangerous and difficult.