The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (37 page)

Radulescu said that mining mechanisation meant you had a lot of machinery and no coal. Birladeanu said the Ukranians were very lazy and he recalled a time when there had been a German bombing raid in the Ukraine. A horse had fallen into a pit and when the smoke cleared there was one Ukranian trying to help the horse out, and fifteen others advising. Radulescu said he had asked Castro about his beard and Castro said he was going to keep his beard until American imperialism ended.

Saturday 8 June

Got up at an ungodly hour. Left the hotel and met Birladeanu and Moldovan, who had come to see us off at the airport. Talked a bit about Stalin and they stressed again that he was very intelligent and decisive and had advised Rumania to slow down its collectivisation programme on the grounds that the Russians had no alternative as the Soviet Union was a pioneer; but that Rumania could do it in its own time in a more leisurely way.

Well, that was about it. They all waved and we got in our plane and we talked all the way back to London.

Wednesday 24 July

At the House of Commons there was a debate on Tam Dalyell, who had released information given to him as a member of the Science and Technology Committee on the Porton Chemical Warfare Establishment. I
went into the Lobby because I understood it was a three-line Whip. But I just couldn’t face voting with all those Tories against Tam so I saw the Chief Whip and said ‘I can’t,’ and he said, ‘Well, don’t bother,’ so I went into the lavatory and I didn’t vote.

Wednesday 21 August – Stansgate

A day that will not be forgotten. It was Stephen’s birthday. That was the first thought in our minds when we woke up and then we heard the news that the Russians and the Warsaw Pact countries had invaded Czechoslovakia. My spirits sank, because, although we had half expected this might happen in the summer we thought it had all been patched up: this really takes you right back to Hungary in 1956.

The rest of the day was devoted to Stephen’s birthday and, it being his seventeenth, he was able to drive on the highways. We went to Maldon together in the car, did some hill starts and then came back and had a lovely birthday party.

Cabinet has been called tomorrow on the Czechoslovakian situation.

Thursday 22 August

Up at 5.30 and to London for the Cabinet.

It was generally agreed that we didn’t want to interfere with trade with the Soviet Union because, even in the height of the Berlin Air Lift or the Hungarian situation, we had still traded with the Russians. But there was a very strong feeling that ministerial visits and exchanges would have to be checked.

From my immediate point of view, of course, it has absolutely knocked every prospect of the computer deal completely out of the window because the Americans, who were bitterly opposed to my suggestion that we should supply computer technology to Russia and Rumania, will be adamant and Ministers opposed to it will have their hand greatly strengthened. So that is very disappointing. It also means my Russian visit is affected.

Dick Crossman thought we could do more, eg propaganda from the BBC. He is still the psychological warrior in moment of crisis.

Eddie Shackleton took a very strict defence view, saying that surely the important thing for stability in Europe was that each superpower should have its own sphere of influence and better that the Russians control Czechoslovakia than that there be any disturbance to the Western European status quo which might create a dangerous situation.

I did ask whether the hot line was being used and whether we had really taken into account the tremendous damage the Russians had done to the world Communist movement, which is completely split on this, with the British, French and Italian Communist Parties, and the Chinese, denouncing it.

But it was an unsatisfactory position. We agreed that Parliament would be
recalled on Monday. There wasn’t much we could do but we felt we owed to the Czechs to show that we did care.

Back to Stansgate.

Friday 23 August

Joan and Brian Simon arrived at Stansgate early this morning. Brian is Professor of Education at Leicester, the son of old Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, a former Liberal who became Labour. Brian is writing the book on comprehensive education with Caroline and is also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He had in fact just come back from a visit to Czechoslovakia in the course of the summer. They have many friends there and they were very upset indeed about what had happened.

Saturday 24 August

The Simons left at 6.30 this morning and they were due back tonight but phoned to say they couldn’t return and we quite understood. I think he got deeply involved in the various meetings that were called, and we noticed that the statement the Communist Party issued was highly critical, so he apparently had won the day.

Sunday 25 August

Slightly better news from Czechoslovakia. The disappearance of Dubcek, First Secretary of the Party, has caused a great deal of anxiety but there are now rumours that he is in Moscow with General Svoboda, the President, and maybe something will emerge from it.

Thursday 29 August

Stansgate. I think it has been the worst August for years.

Stephen goes around with a camera and takes lots of sunset movies and Mother goes in every night and tells the ‘babies’ (Melissa and Joshua) Bible stories. Melissa is busy writing another ‘novel’. She is always doing that.

Tuesday 17 September

This morning I went by helicopter to the Farnborough Air Show. At lunch I sat next but one to General Lemnitzer, the Supreme Commander of SHAPE, [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe]. He told me an interesting and amusing story, although he didn’t realise it. I had asked him about the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and he had said what an incredibly competent military operation it had been, how the Russians had maintained signal security and the Americans had known nothing about it in advance. Indeed, I learned later that Lemnitzer himself had been to Salonika the night before the invasion and clearly wouldn’t have gone if he had had any forewarning. But he did tell me how the Russians had captured
Prague with an airborne division without any bloodshed. Apparently at about midnight, an Aeroflot airliner flying over Prague radioed through to the control tower saying it had a malfunctioning engine and asked if it could land.

The Czechs helped them in and on the plane were seventy security police and air traffic controllers who knew the layout of Prague airport absolutely perfectly. They simply overpowered the Czech air traffic controllers and took control with hardly any casualties and allowed the airborne division to land by dawn.

I was very impressed by this account and asked how he got hold of this story. He said Shirley Temple Black had told him. ‘She is a very capable woman,’ he said, which also gave away his political views as she is an extreme right-wing McCarthyite Republican. It fascinated and amused me that a five-star general, and the Pentagon and the White House, should have got the only information of any value about the invasion from a film star, a former child actress. But he didn’t see the joke.

Monday 7 October

In the evening I went to a North Kensington Labour Party meeting, the first one held there, I think, since the ‘66 Election, and some Black Power people were there. They just laughed at the speaker before me. When I got up they began shouting. So I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to make a speech. I make about three a week and I would much rather listen to you.’ So they came forward and sat in the front, a Black Power man abused me and said I was a lord and the British working movement was bourgeois and so on, and it became interesting after that.

Thursday 17 October

My speech on broadcasting policy to be made tomorrow came back from Transport House and I saw to it that it went round to Fred Peart, as Leader of the House, John Silkin, the Chief Whip, John Stonehouse, the Postmaster General, Gerald Kaufman at Number 10, and Charles Hill, Chairman of the BBC, with a little note.

Friday 18 October

To Bristol and Hanham for the meeting on the role of broadcasting. The local Party had got together a few more people than would otherwise have been there. The place was chock-a-block with journalists and television people. I had been on the phone during the day and discovered that Number 10 didn’t want me to comment on it on any television or radio broadcasts afterwards. Harold is obviously rather angry.

This speech by Tony Benn was the first of the now familiar critiques developed over the
years questioning the power and accountability of the press, television and radio – the ‘media’. Part of the speech was directed specifically at the BBC
:

‘The BBC has assumed part of the role of Parliament. It is the current talking shop, the national town meeting of the air, the village council. But access to it is strictly limited. Admission is by ticket only. It is just not enough. We have got to find a better way and give access to far more people than now are allowed to broadcast.

‘The trouble is that we have extended the overwhelming technical case for having a monolithic broadcasting organisation into a case for unifying programme output control under a single Board of Governors. Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters, and somehow we must find some new way of using radio and television to allow us to talk to each other.

‘We’ve got to fight all over again the same battles that were fought centuries ago to get rid of the licence to print and the same battles to establish representative broadcasting in place of the benevolent paternalism by the constitutional monarchs who reside in the palatial Broadcasting House.

‘It is now a prime national task to find some way of doing this. It must be based on, and built around, the firm framework of public service control and operation, and not dismembered and handed over to the commercial forces which already control every other one of the mass media except the BBC. For in the BBC we have an instrument of responsible communication which is quite capable of being refashioned to meet our needs in the Seventies and Eighties as it did so brilliantly in the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties.’

Monday 21 October

There is a major row raging over my BBC speech.
The Times
led this morning with a heading saying that Gunter asked the Prime Minister to repudiate me so I am not out of the wood yet, but with all the other papers ‘up against’ me, I must expect a certain amount of trouble.

By and large, I am getting a very friendly reception from the Party, although some Labour Members have tabled a motion of support for the independence of the BBC: but then I don’t disagree with that myself.

Sunday 24 November

The papers this morning are full of the news that de Gaulle has refused to devalue the franc. I must say I laughed myself sick all day. From all accounts at the Bonn conference last week the French threatened to devalue by 25 per cent and said they could not accept a devaluation of less than 11.11 per cent. And then in the event de Gaulle has refused to do it.

This afternoon Caroline and I went for an hour and a half’s walk in Kensington Gardens. It was a very nice quiet day.

Saturday 30 November

Among my letters today was one from a man in Bristol who told me to keep away from the House of Commons for the next fortnight because he had sold some grenades at £3 each to somebody who intended to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Normally one would dismiss a bomb scare letter like that as a hoax but there were certain features of the letter which made it more interesting.

First of all he specified the amount of money he had been paid for each grenade in brackets; he was also concerned that I might be hurt and said that I had helped him once in Bristol, which made the thing rather authentic. He then went on to say that he had heard it was something to do with the Welsh nationalists, and the BBC in Monmouthshire. It so happened that the day after he had posted the letter the Welsh nationalists did stage a sit-in at the BBC studios in Cardiff, so there was enough to make it look quite serious.

I rang the House of Commons Police and got a phone call back, suggesting I take the letter to the local police station, so I sent Stephen round to Ladbroke Grove and he stood in line with a woman who had lost a handbag and a boy whose bike had been pinched. When the policeman asked what he wanted, Stephen said, ‘It’s about a bomb.’ So they whipped him into a private room and he gave them the letter and told them the background. A few minutes later I had a phone call from Inspector Watts of Special Branch, who asked if I would let him have a note of the people I had helped in Bristol. I said that in eighteen years as an MP, I must have helped about 40,000 people, and he asked if I had any correspondence.

Tuesday 10 December

I went to Cabinet, where Harold began by ‘Warning the Plotters’. He said that four senior Ministers had told him that one member of the Cabinet had been going round stirring things up, indicating conspiracy against Harold’s own leadership, and that if this went on, within further ado he would simply reconstruct his government.

Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan are the obvious suspects, and they probably are doing it a little bit, but not as much as Harold thinks. I knew nothing about it one way or the other but I’m sure if there are conspirators that is about the worst possible way of dealing with them.

Wednesday 11 December

I went to Cabinet and the Falkland Islands was the only item; a long discussion. The general view was that the scheme that had been worked out and presented by Michael Stewart, ie signing a memorandum with Argentina saying that we would hand over sovereignty as soon as possible on a date to be fixed, but having a simultaneous document saying we wouldn’t do it without the Falkland Islanders’ agreement, gave an impression of deviousness.

Michael Stewart was very upset, understandably, but he had gone rather further than his brief and his paper was rejected. I think Harold was a bit embarrassed because he was pretty heavily tied up in this as well.