The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (49 page)

Thursday 29 June

Caroline and I went to Number 10 for a dinner given by Heath for a
Senegali delegation including musicians. I was standing in for Harold. Caroline liked the music and talked to Heath about it. I find it difficult to talk to him, but I asked him about Sir Francis Chichester, the yachtsman. He told me that Chichester was dying from leukaemia and that was why he had had to come back from his trip. I did make him laugh by saying that at the Labour Conference, we sang ‘The People’s Flag is deepest red . . .’ while the people at the back, the right wing, would sing, ‘The People’s Flag should be forgot, And never brought to mind again.’

Heath made a mad, impassioned speech about Europe and Africa and how now the imperial period was over, Europe was united and it could work with Africa to be an influence in the world. It was nineteenth-century imperialism reborn in his mind through status within the Common Market.

Caroline and I talked to Sir Patrick Reilly, the ex-Ambassador in Paris. He was the man who had written a sensational farewell despatch which was read everywhere in Whitehall and which included some frank comments on George Brown.

Wednesday 6 September

There was an awful massacre yesterday at the Munich Olympic Games – an appalling thing to have happened. Eleven Israeli athletes were killed by Arab terrorists from the Black September organisation.

Monday 11 September

Home Policy Committee. Another row over the Asians expelled from Uganda, although to be fair to him Jim Callaghan does recognise that we must have the Asians but just thinks we should limit the numbers. He was very open about it. I have some sympathy for those who say that it is easy for the people who live in Hampstead and Holland Park to say that the Asians should be admitted, but what are they themselves doing about helping the immigrants.

Saturday 30 September – Labour Party Conference, Blackpool

At 12.30 I went to see Harold. He was pacing up and down in his suite, in shirtsleeves. When I got there Marcia was with him. I hadn’t seen her for ages. Her book has just been sent to me with two or three very friendly pages about me, and I said to her, ‘How nice to see you – I haven’t seen you for a year. Thank you for sending me your book: I must say your references to me in it were much kinder than in Harold’s book,’ pointing at Harold but not looking at him. As a matter of fact, it is a nice book. It recreates the confidence we had in 1964 when we all thought a great deal of each other.

We talked around a bit and then I said, ‘You know, Harold, I have read all these silly things about a row between you and me but I’m the only one of your colleagues who came out publicly in your support in the summer and
you know very well that I have never made things difficult. I was looking back over my papers for 1960 . . .’

‘So was I,’ he interrupted. ‘I sent for photocopies of everything that happened in 1960.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I had them in my files and I read your statement when you stood against Gaitskell, and I read my statement when I supported you and we have both been saying the same thing for many years.’ We talked about the Common Market resolutions, and it was altogether a friendly chat.

Monday 2 October

We had the formal opening of the Conference and I made my Chairman’s speech. It was thought to be a slight anti-climax. That is one of the difficulties about press coverage: the press had built it up as a challenge to Harold and were preparing themselves for Harold’s great triumph, in which he would emerge as the man who saved the Party from extremism. So the Conference was worried because it had seen all this and began recalling the 1960 days.

Jim Callaghan, in a long and enormously boring speech, moved ‘Labour’s Programme for Britain’ and took an hour and five minutes – he had been allowed about thirty-five. It was an absolute abuse of Executive privilege.

Went to the
Labour Weekly
reception and there was a big cake for their first anniversary. I said to Harold, ‘You stick the knife in for a change, Harold.’ Harold laughed, mainly because he thought it was an incredible piece of effrontery to make such a joke. At any rate, he did, and the story appeared in
Labour Weekly
.

Wednesday 4 October

We had the debate on the Common Market. I formally moved the statement and then we had Composite 43, moved by Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire, the Boilermakers’ resolution, moved by Danny McGarvey, and the Engineers’ resolution. The debate was thrown open and we got through it very well. I said at the beginning of the debate that I didn’t intend to call many MPs but I knew that the Conference would obviously want to hear from Roy Jenkins and Michael Foot.

I had not actually had a ‘request to speak’ card from Michael Foot but I had had a handwritten note and I had not had a card at all from Roy; indeed, I had heard rumours that Roy didn’t wish to speak. So I asked Gwyn Morgan, who was sitting next to me, whether he’d send a message to Roy. He said he didn’t know whether he wanted to speak, so I said, ‘Well, that’s entirely up to him, but would you send a mesage, to ask him when he would like to speak, and I will call him.’ A message came back saying he didn’t want to speak. I said to the Conference, ‘As Roy has indicated that he doesn’t wish to speak, I will call Willy Hamilton to speak against the resolutions.’

Apparently at that moment people who were sitting near Roy shouted,
‘Chicken, coward,’ and he was absolutely furious. This became quite an issue – had I done it deliberately or not? Well, in fact, I did decide in the morning that I would do this because Roy had been attacking me all week for new levels of censorship, for trying to shut him up and for intolerance. So I decided I would put that to the test by making it clear that I had offered to call him to speak and let him face the consequences of not speaking. I knew his line – the ‘low profile’ which means you are afraid of the mass audience and you just want to talk in private little groups about your principles and integrity. Also Roy has been attacking me for a total failure of leadership. I had failed, he argued, to give leadership to the Conference of the Party; he by contrast was always giving leadership. The plain truth is that he hasn’t spoken at Conference about the Common Market for years, certainly not since he got anywhere near the top, and whatever people may say about me, I have certainly never lacked the guts to say what I thought. So, in fact, it was a prepared manoeuvre if you like; it’s a crude way of putting it but it was a prepared decision – if he refused to be called – to expose the fact that he wouldn’t speak. I wasn’t absolutely sure that he didn’t want to; that is the plain truth for the history books, in case anyone wants to know. And I am not at all sorry.

Anyway, I called Willy Hamilton instead, and he delivered an attack on me but it made a friend of him for life, so Frank McElhone assured me!

In the end the Executive statement and the Boilermakers’ resolution were carried and the AUEW was defeated. Jack Jones had been to see Harold and Harold had given him some assurances about this and that, and no doubt twisted his arm. So Jack had agreed not to vote for the AUEW, there being no love lost between him and Hugh Scanlon at the moment.

I had a talk to Jimmy Reid and the UCS people who were down. They were meeting Wayne Harbin, President of Marathon oil rig builders, that night. I had an amusing exchange with them. We were talking and I was advising them as best I could; they were all my old buddies. Then Jimmy Airlie said, ‘There’s a photographer here, do you want a photograph?’ So Jimmy Reid said, ‘We’re seeing Chataway tomorrow and it might be embarrassing if we were photographed with you.’ I said, ‘That’s fine. A year ago I was wondering whether it was respectable to be seen with you but if now it’s the other way round and you don’t want to be seen with me, that’s a very great tribute that I shouldn’t be respectable enough for you.’ They saw the point immediately and they laughed, and they got the photographer.

Friday 6 October

We had Harry Nicholas’s farewell speech in which he meant to be friendly but it came out in a way that revealed him for the male chauvinist pig that he is – with all the cheap jokes about women. Made Caroline cringe.

I had heard rumours of Dick Taverne’s imminent resignation as Labour MP for Lincoln and so I had asked various journalists to keep their eyes open
and Mary Lou to feed me immediate information on the platform in case Taverne did make a statement before the end of the Conference. I waited anxiously all morning. Tony Banks, a Labour councillor, moved his point of order asking whether the changes I had made in Conference procedure would continue in future years. I said that was a genuine point of order but it was not for me, it was for the next Chairman. This was designed to boost my chairmanship, which had come in for a lot of criticism.

Then at about 12.15 I began getting news that Taverne had called a press conference. All the press lobby had gone to London to listen to it. He announced that he would be standing as a Democratic Labour candidate, and he attacked the Party. Mary Lou sent me a garbled typed account of what he had said but it was enough to indicate that his plan had been to see the Labour Conference end on a phoney vote of unity and then wreck it all by his statement. So I decided – without telling Caroline or anyone else – that I would make this the occason for a comment on Taverne and also on the role of the mass media; because last weekend
The Times
had published its survey showing that there would be tremendous support for a new centre-left-Liberal-type party, and I knew that John Torode was involved in helping Taverne in preparing a television programme this weekend.

So when it came to me to speak, I made my proper Chairman’s remarks of thanking everybody and then I said the Conference had wanted socialism; wanted unity; wanted us to work hard together and wanted an Election. I said by chance, not of our making, the opportunity for the latter had come with the announcement this morning, a few minutes ago, that there would be a by-election in Lincoln. ‘I say nothing about our departing colleague except for a tinge of sadness; but others have tried to damage us before and haven’t succeeded.’ They cheered and cheered at all this. Then I said, ‘This is more than that because it is the first time that the mass media has actually put up a candidate in the Election. I wish the workers in the media would sometimes remember that they are members of the working class and have a sense of responsibility to see that what is said about us is true.’ This led to another great wave of cheering. Then I went on to say that the mass media was difficult to deal with when it was selling their papers or producing their programmes but if they actually put up a candidate, then we should have a chance of defeating them. Then I brought the Conference to its feet to sing ‘The Red Flag’.

It was quite clear to me that the people on the platform were absolutely livid at my speech. Harold apparently had been smoking his pipe furiously and everyone else was angry that I had raised the temperature by mentioning Taverne. What I gathered was that they still regarded Taverne as a member of the Party and an attack on Taverne was reopening inner Party splits, which they wanted to play down. Also they were annoyed about the reference to the mass media because they don’t want trouble with the media and they are all gutless.

We packed up, and caught the special train home. When we got to London, the
Evening Standard
was already running my ‘amazing’ outburst against the press and my ‘savage personal attack’ on Taverne.

We were very tired. Caroline thought that a period of silence was required. She thought I had really perhaps made a mistake in ending the Conference the way I had done. I think that was also the view of Mary Lou, Frances Morrell and one or two others.

Saturday 7 October

There was tremendous coverage this morning of my Blackpool speech, the
Telegraph
charging me with inciting workers to strike against the press.

Sunday 28 January 1973

Ray Buckton drove me to Doncaster for a meeting on the railways. I like Ray: he is an interesting man, and a great friend of Clive Jenkins. Since he became General Secretary of ASLEF, he has been playing a very active part in trade unionism and is regarded as a great rather than a dangerous radical. He was cautious with me in the car – I suspect most trade unionists are cautious with all parliamentary people – but at the same time very friendly. He told me how the railwaymen had succeeded last year in helping the miners to prevent oil getting through to the power stations and, indeed, without the ASLEF ban on oil supplies he didn’t think the strike could have succeeded. He also told me that someone from the Post Office Engineering Union had warned him that he, Ray, was having his telephone line bugged during the strike. These examples of working-class solidarity being used, tentatively, to defend people against the Government impressed me. I felt that they were preparing themselves, not in any sense for a revolution but for a transfer of power of an important kind.

Monday 29 January

Big news today arising from the Poulson hearing. A claim was made that Tony Crosland had been given a £500 coffee pot by Poulson. Tony, very sensibly, called a press conference immediately, produced the coffee pot, which he had had valued at £50, returned it at once and said he wished he had never seen the damn thing. By acting really quickly, he disposed of the issue straight away.

Saturday 24 February

I arrived home at about 2 am from Bristol to find the children still up and that Caroline had gone to Brighton because Hilary had been kicked in the back playing football there and had been admitted to hospital with serious kidney damage. Caroline stayed with him overnight. I had a few hours’ sleep then drove down to Brighton, found Hilary in a bad way and we authorised an emergency operation. Rosalind his fiancée was very worried.

Wednesday 28 February

There was an all-day ASLEF strike today. The industrial disputes at the moment – the gas workers, the hospital workers, the railway engine drivers and the teachers – do represent a major government confrontation with the trade unions, something which is creating a great deal of public agitation and nervousness on the part of the political leadership.