The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (58 page)

So it has got the best possible start and we shall just have to see what happens. Nothing further has come from Number 10.

Thursday 16 January 1975

At Cabinet we had a brief report on John Stonehouse as to whether he
should be unseated from the House of Commons and I asked, ‘May I say something that I know won’t be very popular. I think we’ve got to be very careful about this. I’m the only man sitting here who’s been expelled from the House of Commons by a House of Commons committee, and that’s wrong. The electors put us here, and once we start arranging that people can be dismissed by the House of Commons, that’s a very dangerous precedent. Stonehouse hasn’t been convicted of any offence, you can’t pre-empt that. When Peter Baker, the Tory MP for Norfolk South, was in jail in 1954 for nine months awaiting trial, he didn’t resign. You say Stonehouse has been absent from the House for two months, that’s true, but Francis Noel-Baker was absent from his Swindon seat for
three years
after the 1966 Election. You say that he’s let his electors down, but then Chris Mayhew changed parties. The Chiltern Hundreds is not for nothing because an MP
cannot
actually resign from Parliament.’

To my amazement I got a bit of support. Roy Jenkins and one or two others agreed. Bob Mellish just took the lynch mob’s view. ‘The Party’s angry, we want to get him out.’ So we agreed to set up a select committee.

Tuesday 21 January

Cabinet, where the entire morning was devoted to Europe.

First Harold said that he thought an agreement among Ministers to differ would be acceptable from the moment of the Cabinet decision. We would need guidelines to ensure that we all behaved in a comradely way, and there should be no personal attacks.

Barbara Castle thought that the freedom we were being invited to agree followed from the referendum. Of course, in the end, the renegotiated terms we got would not necessarily meet with the requirements of the manifesto. There would be a messy middle-of-the-road muddle.

‘You talk about a messy middle-of-the-road muddle, but if the Cabinet understands what I mean, I’m at my best in a messy middle-of-the-road muddle,’ said Harold.

Everybody hooted with laughter; it was a very revealing comment, and Harold is at his best in those circumstances, laughing at himself. Bob Mellish passed a note across to me: ‘He’s like a hippopotamus who likes flopping about in the mud.’

Thursday 23 January

In the afternoon, I heard Harold make his historic statement, that there would be a referendum and that Ministers would be free to speak and to vote – a notable constitutional change. I am intensely proud to have been associated with it.

Dashed over to the office where Gregor MacKenzie was giving a party for Burns night. He asked me to propose a little toast to the immortal memory of
Robert Burns. I said my mother was a Scot and I therefore spanned the great border. I had as Postmaster General instituted a stamp for Robert Burns, though when I suggested it, my officials were very much against it. They warned me that Robert Bums’s private life had fallen below the standard that would be accepted by Her Majesty for admission to the enclosure at Ascot.

Wednesday 29 January

I have been told that the Foreign Office will stop the Industry Bill if I don’t give a pledge to the Commission that it will conform to Treaty obligations. I am bloody angry and this is the real crunch, revealing the Foreign Office at its weakest. All these promises that are given that you wouldn’t have to bother about the Commission, that British interests would be safeguarded, are absolutely false.

Tuesday 4 February

The great event today is the Tory leadership election and I heard Heath make what turned out to be his last intervention as Leader of the Opposition when he asked about the risk of a war in the Middle East. He was pretty confident against Mrs Thatcher.

Made my statement on steel and there was a bit of a hoo-ha in the middle of Questions and Answers because the result of the first ballot for the Tory leadership was spreading round the benches. It was Mrs Thatcher, 130; Heath, 119; and Hugh Fraser, 16. So Heath resigned and that’s the end of him. Very sad in a way. Politics is a brutal business, and I think we would be foolish to suppose that Mrs Thatcher won’t be a formidable leader; and Harold couldn’t pour scorn on a woman because people wouldn’t have it. I think the quality of the debate will be raised because the Tory Party will be driven to the right and there will then be a real choice being offered to the electorate.

Wednesday 5 February

Willie Whitelaw, James Prior, John Peyton and Geoffrey Howe announced that they were standing against Mrs Thatcher in the second ballot. But I guess that she will sweep the board, because the opposition has become a completely negative ‘Stop Thatcher’ campaign, which I think will bring her tremendous support.

Saturday 22 February

Mrs Thatcher has been mobbed in Scotland. She’s like the Queen really; she looks like her, talks like her and is of the same age. I don’t know whether she will be able to survive after the honeymoon but she is a popular figure. Heath is being forgotten and is being sloughed off just as Eden, Macmillan and Home had been.

Sunday 23 February

Frances Morrell told me that she had heard from the journalist Patrick Cosgrave that Tory Central Office had prepared a tremendous campaign in favour of Britain remaining in the Common Market and constituency parties were being asked to work flat-out to get a ‘Yes’ in the referendum. But when Mrs Thatcher was elected she told them to drop the whole thing – this was the price demanded by the anti-Marketeers for their support. So Tory Central Office has shelved it. It is a most interesting story.

Meanwhile, Heath is to head the pro-Market campaign around the country and if he becomes the hero of the Tory press, that will undermine the position of Mrs Thatcher. On the other hand, if Wilson is supporting Heath then it will do enormous damage to Wilson. Heath’s support won’t help anybody!

A telegram arrived last week from Bristol saying, ‘Get out if you value your life.’ It had been passed to the security people, who sent it to Canon Row police station, where a Superintendent Harden had asked Mary Lou to go in and see him tomorrow to discuss it. It is slightly odd that they should take so much notice now. I have been getting letters every month saying, ‘You have six more months to live,’ ‘. . . five more months to live’, ‘ . . . four months’, and so on, posted in the Reading area and nobody seems to have taken any notice of them. But this telegram apparently interests the police. I am surprised that the Post Office agreed to send such a telegram. Perhaps they reported it to the police in Bristol; perhaps they know who sent it. I am slightly irritated in fact that Bristol should be the source of the message because I have always rather prided myself on never getting any threatening letters from the city of my own seat.

Tuesday 25 February

To Ministerial Committee on Economic Strategy this morning, where we dealt with the paper I had submitted, called ‘A Choice of Economic Policies’, outlining Strategies A and B. Strategy A was the strategy which had been discussed fully in the Committee so far. In consisted of three aspects: tax increases and public-spending cuts; some form of enforceable pay restraint; and further transfers of cash into the company sector. I thought it would be very serious to adopt this strategy, which I feared would lead to heavy deflation, rising unemployment, cuts in real wages and the withdrawal of support from the Government by the TUC and the Labour Movement.

In outlining Strategy B, I warned that this strategy might strain international relations possibly including retaliatory measures, strengthen middle-class opposition and impose some stress on relations between the Labour Movement and the Government. Finally, if the Government continued on its present course, there might be severe confrontation which would merely deepen the existing social divisions. When I had finished,
might feel it is his public duty to polish me off. I will just have to take reasonable precautions.

Sunday 2 March

I had a telephone call from Allister Mackie of the
Scottish Daily News
. He told me that just before Bob Maxwell went to Moscow two days ago, he made a bid for the whole of the paper, insisting that in return for his £100,000 investment, he should be made Chairman and Chief Executive and the whole co-operative structure should be wound up, leaving him in charge. Allister said it was a terrible bombshell.

I said, ‘Look, there are two points. First of all, remember that if Maxwell wants to take it over, it is the first real independent proof of viability because he wouldn’t want to take over a dead duck. Secondly, call his bluff, don’t change the prospectus because if you bring it back to Ministers, they will kill it. So issue the prospectus as far as you can, as it is.’

He said he had a telephone call through to Maxwell in Moscow. An hour later he called me back saying he had made it clear to Maxwell that they were not prepared to accept his conditions and Maxwell had backed down, so it looks as if they are safe. I was delighted.

Tuesday 4 March

Frances Morrell had rewritten the text of a talk I am giving to American press correspondents, leaving out all the good bits. So I lost my temper and stamped and shouted. She said, ‘Well, we have got to be careful.’ I said, ‘Yes, but this won’t help.’ I cooled down and apologised. It is becoming clear that I can’t make the speech I wanted to at all.

Wednesday 12 March

To the House of Commons, where Harold made his statement on the Dublin summit of the heads of the EEC governments to finalise British terms. It was really rather sad to see the Tories waving their order papers and Labour people silent, except for the pro-Market group. It is all over bar the shouting. Shirley Williams reiterated on the radio today that she would resign from the Government if the country voted to leave the Common Market. So, in fact, she has now established freedom to dissent.

Tuesday 18 March

A momentous day in the history of Britain.

At Cabinet we had before us the papers detailing the renegotiation package, and for the first time the issue of sovereignty was discussed properly. The crucial question was whether the Community was to be a supranational structure or a community of sovereign states.

Harold brought us on to the main question. Should we accept the terms or not? ‘I recommend that we should stay in and that is the view of the
Denis came back, saying that we mustn’t panic; that the situation wasn’t anything like as bad as was suggested; and that we must switch to exports and investment. He was against import controls, because it would mean that we were failing to expose British industry to foreign competition.

I came away exhausted. It is getting awful tough now.

Thursday 27 February

This morning Jack Jones came to see me at my request. I told him everything was all right with Meriden, and then I asked him if he would like to serve on the NEB. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am a General Secretary of a major union and I can’t do that too.’

‘Could you be pressed?’

He said, ‘No.’

Then at 4.15 I went over to the Department for what I thought was a final round of talks with the Meriden people. I reported what had happened and said, ‘We have cleared the sum for export with the Cabinet. Now I am hoping we can make progress. Are there any problems?’

So Poore said, ‘There is a little problem. You want an annual review of the figure and I must have a guarantee for five years.’

I said, ‘Look, the Cabinet wants this to come off. It must come off. We have got to find a way.’ I banged the table and I was a bit rude.

He then added at the end, ‘And I want an inflation guarantee.’

‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s it, you’ll have to dose your factories. Every time anything is agreed, you want something else.’ He left the room at this point.

It is this kind of thing that makes me a socialist. If you take the Meriden situation, why should I have to deal with one man about the jobs of 2,000? Caroline put that to me and she is absolutely right. It is an extremely primitive way of dealing with industry.

Friday 28 February

I went off to record an interview in a video studio near Moorgate. I arrived there just as ambulances and fire engines were pouring by, within a few minutes of a crash at Moorgate tube station in which between fifteen and twenty people were killed, an appalling tragedy.

Saturday 1 March

Today I got a letter, posted in London, written in purple felt pen to Mr Wedgewood (spelt wrongly) Benn, House of Commons. It read, ‘You rotten traitor. Thank God you have only 7 more weeks.’ I don’t take much notice of death threats, I think because nobody has been murdered in the Palace of Westminster since Spencer Perceval, in 1806. But you never know, with George Brown’s attack on me as an enemy of democracy, a good citizen
Foreign Secretary, though he will speak for himself. We have substantially achieved our objectives, the Community has changed
defacto
and
de jure
. The attitude of the Commonwealth has changed too. The Commonwealth wants us to stay in, and the Commonwealth trade patterns have regrettably changed. If we had a free trade area for the UK, the conditions upon us would be stiff or stiffer. I am only persuaded 51 per cent to 49 per cent, indeed I had anxieties right up to the last few days, but I now recommend that we stay in.’

Jim Callaghan followed, ‘In supporting you, Harold, I would like to say something about the development of Europe. I am unashamedly an Atlanticist, but we are living in a regional world and we must use the regional organisations. The Soviet Union does not find our membership of the EEC a hindrance to détente. Indeed, I believe that secretly they might like us in, to control the Germans. The seventy-seven non-aligned countries which are now banded together at the United Nations have the potential to destroy the UN and we are better able to withstand them in a regional group. As to the prospects for democractic socialism in the Community, four of the countries are Labour, or have Labour representation in the Government: Holland, Denmark, Germany and the Republic of Ireland, and now Britain. The market economy as an idea is quite flyblown, and the withdrawal of Britain would strain our relations with Ireland.