The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (6 page)

‘Along with most of the war-time generations, he spent his three terms in a leisurely way before joining the RAF in summer 1943. He spent a year in Southern Rhodesia, learning to fly which he thought was great fun, though his feelings were not shared by his new instructors.

‘His extremely youthful appearance had at least one amusing repercussion. After his first round of the cook-house, as a very new Pilot Officer, the sergeant-cook offered him an orange to take away. Benn accepted this gratefully and fled, blushing furiously. From there he went to the Middle East. His stay in the Middle East was brief and pleasant. It included a leave in Palestine, where he and two others stayed over VE Day as guests in a
Jewish communal settlement. At the victory festivities there, the Jews of all nations did their traditional folk dances and the three English officers were asked to do an English national dance. Boompsa-daisy is said to be still popular in the Sea of Galilee area.

‘Posted home in time for the General Election he drove a loudspeaker van round his local constituency in Westminster and soon afterward, full of boyish enthusiasm, transferred to the Fleet Air Arm for service in the Far East. However, armed with the atom bomb, the UN Supreme Command decided that Benn’s services could be dispensed with and he was sent on indefinite leave . . .

‘What can be said of him as a person? He dresses scruffily, talks too much and is rather boisterous. His interests are mainly political (being a rather idealistic socialist) but he also enjoys discussing a great many other subjects of which he is even more ignorant. He collects pipes, believes in complete social and political equality as between the sexes, gets rather too easily embarrassed for comfort and laughs at his own jokes. Being by nature somewhat unmethodical he attempts to organise his life with three mechanical devices. A petty cash account (to keep him economical), a job list (as a substitute for imperfect memory) and a time chart (to give him an incentive to work).

‘Of the future he does not like to think overmuch. He is on the list of Labour Party parliamentary candidates (potential) and hopes to make something of this when he has had time to supplement his rather inadequate PPE education, by gaining a little first-hand knowledge and experience of some aspect of political activity.’

Thursday 1 April 1948

All is not well with the Abbey Division of Westminster Labour Party. The growth of the organisation has produced cliques and endless bickering. Wilf Messer is a wonderfully reliable and steady chap. Jack Jones, the chairman, is the best type of trade unionist. But there is an ambitious, bitter and intriguing group. The measure of the tragedy is that it has reached the point where Mrs Hammond, a splendid woman, is resigning and if we can’t keep a woman like her in the Party, what hope is there of increasing our membership? Abbey is, I hope, an exception.

Saturday 3 April

My twenty-third birthday. Today the world is heading straight for war. I wonder whether these words will ever be read by anyone who survives.

I know that everyone tends to believe that every war is bound to be the last but this time with atom bombs and bacteria I can’t see how life can go on in a form worth living, when it is over.

On this 23rd birthday of mine I am faced with the problem of what to do
with my life. In a year’s time I shall have left Oxford behind and shall be working for a living.

Is politics really my place? Should I earn my living in business? (Benn Brothers for example). Or should I go down a mine for a year? Just where do I stand politically?
Am
I a socialist? Am I prepared for the personal sacrifices that must necessarily involve?

I must sort out my own position and see if I can’t resolve the present confusions and make out of all this a coherent whole on which to base everything.

While I am on my own weaknesses and faults, another shortcoming is that I want the limelight too much. Another thing that has always worried me is my self-consciousness. I have always worried terribly what people thought of me and made all sorts of efforts to please. This has probably done me more harm than good.

If I am really hated by someone even now it still worries me a lot, but generally speaking I am much more at ease with people and with women. A reputation for insincerity is rather a damaging thing, let alone the fundamental badness of insincerity itself. Am I insincere?

Letters from Anthony Crosland to Tony Benn on the eve of Benn’s marriage to Caroline De Camp; Crosland always called Benn ‘Jimmy
’.

DURING THE LAST
years of the 1940s and the first years of the 1950s Tony Benn’s political diary is very sporadic. At this time he spent a miserable time as a salesman of Benn trade books in America, relieved only by the prospect of his impending marriage to Caroline De Camp of Cincinnati, in 1949. By November 1950 he had been nominated and elected for Bristol South East in a by-election. Earlier that year a General Election had considerably reduced the Labour Government’s majority, and Clem Attlee, now Prime Minister, faced with the dilemma of whether to hold another Election to improve Labour’s parliamentary position, did so and last Thus Churchill became Prime Minister for a second time in 1951.

Between 1951 and 1958, the Benns’ four children – Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua – were born and Tony Benn and his father started to plan a constitutional and legal
campaign that would relieve Tony Benn of an unwanted hereditary title to which he became heir following the death of his brother Michael in the war.

January 1951

I am going to try out a political diary. What I want to do is to highlight the most significant events of which I am a witness and set down contemporary opinions and accounts which my memory would probably distort to suit current purposes were I to try and recall them later on. This is surely the politician’s greatest weakness, if published memoirs are anything to go by.

I am a very new Member of Parliament and it is still exciting to bump into Winston Churchill in the Member’s Lavatory, as I did the other day. It is still pleasant to be called by my Christian name by Aneurin Bevan and to call him Nye.

Monday 29 January

Returned to the Commons, still feeling like a very new boy. After Questions the Prime Minister made a long-awaited statement on the new Defence plans, involving rearmament costing £4,700,000,000 over the next three years and the call-up of 235,000 reservists this summer. It was received in glum silence on our side of the House. Some Labour MPs asked hostile questions and this was used by the Tories as fresh evidence of a Labour split. I went away wanting to discuss it with my colleagues, but I don’t really know them well enough and this frustrated me.

Wednesday 31 January

This morning the Parliamentary Labour Party met to discuss foreign policy and the defence plans.

Clem’s statements were moderate and I think he made a strong case for what he has done. But of course a call for party unity means that everyone must make concessions to different viewpoints. I am unhappy and undecided about German rearmament. And 100 per cent against Japanese rearmament The defence programme I would be inclined to support as I do think that there is a threat of aggression in Europe, though I am not satisfied that enough has been done to negotiate with Russia about Germany or that we have made every possible effort to allay Polish and Czech fears. I think we might do well to guarantee the Oder-Neisse line and perhaps try direct negotiations with the Eastern European countries.

In Korea I am very fearful of MacArthur, but quite what we could have done about the American resolution at the UN I don’t know. They would have carried it (without the modification we achieved) in any case as the Latin American countries are satellites of the USA. It is the same problem we Labour MPs have to face: whether we stay in as loyal members accepting what is done and try to shape policy or whether to rebel and become lone voices in the wilderness. What terrific pressure there is on us. A spell in
Opposition would do us a world of good, if not for the grim prospect of Tory rule and the sad depletion of ranks that a General Election would cause.

Wednesday 7 February

I made my maiden speech today on the advice of various people that it should be ‘about the middle of February’.

Roy Jenkins suggested steel nationalisation. 1 know nothing about steel except what anyone can mug up and it was almost impossible to speak non-controversially about it.

Father had said, ‘A maiden speech is like a canter at a horse show. You are just expected to show your paces in a graceful Way.’

A message came from the Whips’ office asking me to move to the benches above the gangway and shortly afterwards my name was called.

I would certainly have abandoned the whole attempt after the opening speeches had not the family all been present – Mother and Caroline, Father and Dave.

The benches falling away from below me made me feel very tall and rather conspicuous.

I stumbled a bit over ‘right honourable friend’ and ‘right honourable and gallant gentleman’. At one point, speaking of the bad psychological effect of a profitable steel industry while rearmament threatened our living standards, I sensed a change of feeling – and a wave of hostility. But towards the end of my speech I was aware of growing friendliness and laughter. I could see our Front Bench – Strauss, Bevan, Dalton and Strachey – all looking up at me.

I sat down after about fifteen minutes. Sir Ralph Glyn, Conservative Member for Abingdon, followed and paid a very warm tribute which Father enjoyed as much as I did. It had been a success. Conceit compels me to record that I had letters of congratulation from the PM, Strauss, Bevan, Steven Hardie (Chairman of the new Iron and Steel Corporation), and others. I do feel much more at home in the place.

Crosland and I went in to the Smoking Room to join Nye, Hugh Dalton and Dick Crossman. Crossman was under attack by Dalton for the defeatist
New Statesman
policy. Nye’s personality was electric. His vigour and grasp and good humour and power of arguement paralysed me with excitement. Seeing him beside Dalton one could not but notice the difference. Dalton – saturnine, wicked, amusing, intellectual, roguish: Bevan open, honest, good-humoured, and devastating.

Thursday 22 February

I went to Number 10 for tea today. The Prime Minister and Mrs Attlee make a point of entertaining Labour MPs in one way or another. Welsh MPs Llywelyn Williams and Dorothy Rees, and Coventry MP Elaine Burton were the other guests. We went over at 4.30 by car and up to the flat.
Mrs Attlee received us and Clem came in later and stayed for half an hour. There had been a row at Questions, over the appointment of an American admiral over NATO sea forces and Clem had come out of it rather badly. We had been warned by Clem’s PPS not to talk shop and so we were slightly taken aback when Vi went for Clem and asked him why he had knuckled under to the Americans yet again. Clem said nothing, but I got the impression that he really hadn’t cared a bit one way or another and hadn’t even known about the decision before Churchill put down his question.