The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (64 page)

The Shah greeted me and said that Britain was learning what Iran had learned about oil in the past, and that Iran was playing a world role and had to consider the developing world and the maintenance of the Iranian way of life. He said there were two countries in the world that had to maintain their own standards, Iran and possibly the UK. There were dangers but we had to succeed. We needed each other, we had a common philosophy and a common interest in the Persian Gulf. He said our boys in Oman were fighting ‘side by side’.

He talked about the oil companies, who were trying to get a few cents off the barrel and said that if Iran collapsed, they wouldn’t be able to get the oil out and the companies must understand that. He thought some oil should be used for exchange and some sold on the market, but for exchanged goods Iran needed other revenues. He had said earlier that they had to replace their oil revenues with other revenues and were concerned that food-producing countries shouldn’t raise food prices.

Then he described the Iranian nuclear power programme and he said he was getting the technology from the French and the Germans, and he might even take it from the Soviets – why not? But he was happy to co-operate with everyone. I described our programme and said we had made a lot of mistakes and we were happy to make our knowledge available.

Then he went on to talk about other sources of energy – solar energy in the South, geothermal, electric battery cars. He told me he would be ready to contribute immediately to this latter development because he saw a time when every family in Iran would have two cars – an electric car for the town and an automobile for getting about. The country’s annual per capita income had risen from 200 dollars to 1,500 dollars so they could well afford this. I said Walter Marshall, the Department’s Chief Scientist, might come to Iran to discuss these matters with him.

He asked about the North Sea and I described how profitable the BP Forties Field was. He said that the North Sea would transform our prospects if we were not imprudent. It depended on our not sitting back and assuming it would solve our problems. I mentioned NIOC and he said the oil companies must learn the lesson that capital could not interfere with the national interest.

Then I asked him about the ‘white revolution’ of 1963 when he introduced his reform programme, and he was most interesting. He told me that during the war Iran had fallen very low, and even as a boy in Switzerland he was already ‘thinking about the peasants’. During the war Iran was, of course, a victim and all the people could do was hold together. They had very serious problems with their oil and after the war, a madman
(that was a reference to the Prime Minister, Mossadeq) did them great damage. Khrushchev had believed that Iran would fall like a ripe plum into his lap but he had been proved wrong. He said that another country (meaning the US) had thought it could control Iran and that too was a problem. All these factors led to the white revolution – Iran had to be free of foreign influence and modernise but maintain its independence, its national identity and cultural heritage.

In fact, he said, there were so many reforms over the years that they didn’t have much to destroy – just ‘landowners and priests’. There was no great gap between rich and poor and even in the old days, when Persepolis was built, Persia had no class system and tolerated different religions. Persepolis he told me was built by paid labour.

He is a man for whom it would be impossible to have affection but who would count historically as having been a ‘good king’.

Saturday 10 January

Finally left for the airport and we began the long flight home. I did a lengthy TV interview at London Airport, arriving home absolutely exhausted with a hacking cough and bronchitis after a most thrilling week in Iran. The regime is hateful and I can dictate this openly now on to my diary tape; in Iran I always feared my rooms were bugged. It is the most royalist, repressive, absolutist National Socialist regime, but that isn’t to say it isn’t going to grow and be important, so we have to have some relations with it.

One of the most unattractive aspects about politics is that whatever your own aspirations may be, you have to work with others who are repressive. That is certainly true of the Soviet Union and now we know more about America, it is certainly true of the US. But our own record in Northern Ireland, and in bolstering up the Sultan of Oman’s corrupt regime, is also quite appalling.

Wednesday 21 January

The press gave the latest unemployment figures – 1.4 million – and Mrs Thatcher is now referring to us as the natural party of unemployment.

Sunday 25 January

To Chequers in the evening for a meeting with BP about their relationship with BNOC. We had drinks in the Great Hall with a huge log fire. The place does look lovely. Harold asked endless questions about Alaska, Iran, Canada, and David Steel of BP was uneasy because he didn’t really know the figures. Monty Pennell, the Deputy Chairman of BP, was full of facts and Frank Kearton didn’t say a word.

Afterwards Harold showed everyone round. He took us to Churchill’s room, which has been left untouched, and pointed out the little mouse which Churchill had added to a picture. We went into the Long Gallery and
he showed us Elizabeth I’s ring, with its little cameo of Anne Boleyn, which on Elizabeth’s death had been carried all the way to her successor James VI, in Scotland. James rewarded the courier of the ring by making him the Earl of Home. He showed us Cromwell’s death mask lying on silk and his swords on the mantelpiece, Napoleon’s red despatch case and the records made by the British soldiers who guarded him on St Helena.

Harold described how the swimming pool at Chequers had been built by Walter Annenberg, the former US Ambassador, to commemorate President Nixon’s visit to Chequers and I suggested the pool should be renamed ‘the Watergate’.

Then we sat round the log fire with coffee, brandy and cigars and Harold Wilson said, ‘We take no decisions at Chequers. This meeting didn’t take place. Tony has explained your position but I didn’t understand a word; will you tell me?’

David Steel then launched into BP’s objectives: independence; cash flow from the Forties Field; North Sea operations and international operations to be preserved. He said, ‘The BP shares owned by the Bank of England are a problem. We can offer you help but no more.’

When the question of independence came up, Harold got into a long, rambling metaphor about the virginity of BP, how the original marriage had not been consummated because the bride was frigid and how rape was involved – how would they cope with a more randy customer, in the person of Frank Kearton? It was vulgar and thoroughly embarrassing.

His performance tonight was pretty disrespectful, slighting and crude. Harold never rises to the occasion but he was very relaxed. Steel was friendly but difficult. Pennell is a Tory industrialist and basically hostile. Frank seemed rather less than full-sized because BNOC is so weak and there was no indication of support from the PM.

Monday 26 January

The newspapers are still reporting the repercussions of Mrs Thatcher’s attack on the Russians last week, and their retaliation, describing her as the Iron Lady or Iron Maiden, has absolutely delighted the Tory Party.

Saturday 31 January

At 1 Caroline and I went to lunch with Nikolai Lunkov, the Russian Ambassador, and his wife at Kensington Palace Gardens. They had asked us through the Private Office and the four of us lunched alone at his flat. He has been here two and a half years. He’s a 55-year-old, rather dull, ponderous Russian bureaucrat and his wife is a nice middle-aged mum type. He told us how upset he was that when he had written to object to Margaret Thatcher’s speech, the press here had called it ‘an outburst from Moscow’. The ‘Iron Lady’ tag, which appeared in the Red Army paper
The Red Star
, contrasted sharply with what Mrs Thatcher had said to him personally.
‘When you meet her she’s so charming, she wants better relations with the Soviet Union.’

‘Her aggressive stand is just for internal consumption,’ I told him, ‘for her own rank and file.’

He said, ‘Julian Amery was even worse. Do you think we should have responded?’

‘It’s pleased the Conservatives very much,’ I said and left it at that. I didn’t want to be drawn into discussions about Mrs Thatcher with the Russian Ambassador.

Monday 2 February

The papers are full of Jeremy Thorpe, who is in real trouble over this man Scott, who has claimed a sexual relationship with him: it looks as though he’s on his way out.

I talked to Frances and Francis about how we should cope with the mounting press campaign on fuel bills and hypothermia in the elderly.

Friday 6 February

Meeting in the office on fuel disconnections, and I have decided to suspend disconnections of pensioner households temporarily and set up an inquiry under Peter Lovell-Davis to consider problems of payment and collection.

Thursday 12 February

John Biffen, the new Tory Energy spokesman, came at 10 and I had literally five minutes with him. I said perhaps we could establish what the options were so that our discussions in the House would be more sensible. He said he would like that. I commented that I didn’t enjoy the bashing by Heseltine particularly, though I did admire him for making the headlines in Opposition which is a very difficult thing to do. I have high regard for John.

Friday 20 February

Arrived home in time to wish Melissa a happy nineteenth birthday.

To the office and found that the new miners’ banner with a plaque presented by Arthur Scargill had already been screwed up on the wall next to my desk. It is a most beautiful banner, a gift unlike the T&G one, which is only on loan.

Saturday 21 February

Joan Lestor resigned as Under-Secretary in the Department of Education and Science because of the cuts in education, but the most exciting news is that Hugh Scanlon’s appointment to the Gas Coporation has been accepted by the Prime Minister – so that tremendous battle has been won.

Sunday 22 February

We had a lovely birthday party for Melissa. Then at 6 Ken Coates, Joan Lestor, Judith Hart, Tony Banks, Michael Meacher, Dick Clements and Frances Morrell arrived. We discussed the present economic situation and Ken came back to his theory that I should resign. Judith said, ‘Why keep the Government going?’ and Tony asked why I didn’t vote against the Government as a Minister.

We had to dispose of this argument not because it wasn’t a good argument – it is a good argument – but only when you hear it deployed can you give the proper counter-argument which is that the Movement wants three things. It wants the Government sustained; it wants loyalty to the Prime Minister and Ministers; and it wants a different policy to be pursued. If you resign, you’d get the blame for undermining the Government. If you attack the Prime Minister or other Ministers, you simply get into a position where you are deflecting people from real issues on to personalities.

At the end of the evening Joan asked me what she should say about her resignation and I suggested she make a speech in the House of Commons. I found Nye Bevan’s and Harold Wilson’s resignation speeches and we read them. I told her I’d see her tomorrow and advise her. When I sat down, I realised that here was a priceless chance for Joan to get across what the whole problem was. So I wrote a resignation speech for her and she can do what she likes with it. It is an attempt to try to get the argument aired in the Commons in a way that would be hard to contradict: it would hoist up a real flag.

Monday 1 March

Went to the House and couldn’t decide whether to vote for compulsory seat belts. I thought it was a form of tyranny that would make me look a Stalinist. But I rang Caroline and she said, ‘Think of the babies, the children would all want you to, and lives might be saved.’ So I voted in favour and it was carried by a huge majority.

Tuesday 2 March

The only really good news today is that George Brown resigned from the Labour Party. Most people thought he had left years ago but he finally resigned and was on the radio tonight – drunk as ever, giving the most muddled reason why he resigned. But there will be real pleasure inside the Party. If the right-wingers would slip off one by one, that really would be a gain.

Wednesday 3 March

George Brown claimed in the
Daily Mail
today that his resignation had been triggered off by listening to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. There were some sad, indeed absolutely tragic, pictures of him, falling over by his Jaguar car and
being helped to his feet by journalists. One is torn between pity and loathing for a man who is ruined. I can’t put it differently – for someone who has played such a savagely right-wing role in the Labour Party. He began to come to prominence with his attack on Cripps and his motion to get him expelled from the Labour Party; then he tried to get Bertrand Russell expelled and generally speaking he pursued all the wrong courses on everything, trampling on everybody who got in his path.

Saturday 6 March

Went for a long walk with Melissa and we visited Westminster Abbey, the first time Melissa had been inside. Of course the whole of Westminster is my village. That’s where I was born, went to school, where Father and Mother were married, where Father died and where his memorial service was held, and where I work. It is a strange place, Westminster, very dull in the sense that there are no natural centres or shopping areas but I’ve been around there for fifty years.

Sunday 7 March

Dinner at the Foots. There is a very strong rumour that Harold Wilson is about to retire. Nobody knows where it comes from except some funny things have evidently been happening. There is a possibility that some papers which were stolen from Harold’s desk may envelop him in some way in a scandal. Jill is very much in favour of Harold going and I have little doubt that she, Michael and Peter would all support Denis as leader. But if Roy stood, as I think he would have to, and Denis, Jim and Tony Crosland, but Michael
didn’t
stand, then it would be a very curious line-up. Whether I stood would depend on whether I was nominated and by whom.