The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (74 page)

Peregrine Worsthorne came to lunch; he is the Associate Editor of the
Sunday Telegraph
. I asked him about his work. He said he wrote on a Friday, and tomorrow he was going to write about Marcia and Joe Haines, and that the whole story reveals how corrupt government is, and why it should not have too much power. His article will show in effect how unfit for government Labour is, that respect for authority has been eroded by it, and this is damaging.

I told him my theory of the forty-year cycle: that there have to be real radical reforms about every forty years – 1832,1867,1906,1945,1980. He said, ‘Yes, but next time they will be right-wing. Mrs Thatcher will tear up the Welfare State by its roots, and the health service and education. That’s how the radicalism will manifest itself.’

I said, ‘Maybe you are right, you know. It is going to be pretty disruptive.’

He added, ‘She is prepared to deal with the unions as a power but with no social contract or wage control – she doesn’t believe in all that; she will just deal with them as a power in a monetarist society.’

So I said, ‘Well, you know Heath tried that with his monetarist policy, but he had to reverse it, and I think she will have to reverse it too.’

He asked me, ‘Aren’t you worried about the power of the unions?’

‘I know what you mean – the middle class is worried – but if I look at the powerful groups I have to deal with, the unions are only a part. All right, Jack Jones is powerful, but that’s nothing compared to what Fleet Street can do – it pillories you, holds you up to excoriation, Bernard Levin says you are mad. I feel like poor old Solzhenitsyn in Russia, except that Fleet Street can’t actually put me in a lunatic asylum. There is the power of the big oil companies who operate here, and are bigger than nation states. There is the IMF, which forces us to cut the Welfare State. In that jungle of power I don’t see the unions as being dominant.’

Worsthorne told me, ‘I am not in favour of a further stage of reform. I think that the Establishment now needs to be defended, needs to have some backbone put in.’

I said; ‘In 1970 the Establishment thought when Heath comes in he will know all the answers, he’ll take us into Europe and discipline everybody. But by the time we came to power in 1974 the Establishment was totally demoralised.’

Monday 14 February

This morning the papers reported that Tony Crosland was in hospital having been taken ill yesterday, and as the day proceeded it became clear that he was critically ill.

He evidently had a stroke and is deteriorating. Later in the day Bob Mellish came up to me and told me he was not expected to live. I asked Roger Stott, Callaghan’s PPS, and he confirmed that in fact he might well die tonight, but that in any case he could never come back to work. I must say, looking back on it all – though I mustn’t assume the worst – he really is my oldest political friend. I have known him since 1943 when he came back to Oxford on leave from the paratroopers and we spoke together in a debate. That is an enormous length of time and, although he has been arrogant and on the Right of the Party and difficult and supercilious and so on, I recognise that underneath it all there has been a kindness of heart and gentleness of manner and personal sympathy which I found immensely comforting and helpful. He supported me on a number of occasions, although we have been on entirely opposite sides of the Party. I really feel very sad for him, Foreign Secretary for less than a year, at the peak of his parliamentary career at fifty-seven.

More revelations in the papers this morning by Joe Haines, including that
the CBI and the City demanded my dismissal as Secretary of State for Industry: this is not anything new, but just confirming it.

Tuesday 15 February

During lunch I phoned the Administrator of the Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford and there is no doubt Crosland is dying – they don’t know when. Later I heard from David Owen that he had never heard doctors so pessimistic about a stroke patient. Susan is with him and apparently is all right unless she meets friends and then she breaks down.

It’s 2am and I am going home. I forgot to mention that at 7.30 for half an hour Frank Muller, from the Australian Labour Party, came to see me. He’s an environmentalist and he told me briefly about the Australian Labour Movement’s growing determination to stop uranium mining in Australia. He said the mining is of no particular benefit to Australia, it benefits the international uranium companies, and he thought there was a possibility that those interests had contributed to the overthrow of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, in November 1975. He knew something that indicated that the companies were discontented with the Labour Party and the trade union attitude towards uranium before the election following Whitlam’s removal.

It was a bit conspiratorial, but it was interesting, and I described the position here frankly – the enormous power of the nuclear lobby in Britain and my fear that we would go under to it. I wondered if Australia would be able to hold out so long on uranium that it could impose a moratorium worldwide. It has opened up as a left-right issue in Australia.

The facts are fascinating and I do find it one of the most interesting arguments at the moment. He was a serious, bearded, sensitive guy, a zoologist by training, employed by an environmentalist group financed by the Government. It gave me a new dimension to it all. There’s a lot to be said for not being dependent on officials.

Wednesday 16 February

First engagement was at Number 10 for a joint meeting of the Cabinet and the NEC. Tony Crosland absent of course, and the latest news is that he has died mentally. He is really a breathing corpse. It’s tragic.

One of the advantages of doing a diary is that when you dictate it from notes at night, or in this case the following morning, you do get a slightly different feeling about it. I came away feeling that Jim had absolutely clobbered the Executive and that there had been a lot of ill will, but it was just a debate, a regular old Labour Party discussion. The fact that we met together I think was worth while. I’ve been through so many periods when one thinks there is going to be trouble but in the end there never is.

Anyway I went back to the office and Robin Day came to lunch, the first meal with him for ages. I have known him for years, since 1945.

Over lunch he said he didn’t like Mike Yarwood imitating him because Mike Yarwood had him on TV more often than he was on himself. I asked him what he would like to do in the future. Apparently he applied for the job of Director-General of the IBA and of the BBC and was turned down. He said he thought there was too much trouble whenever he got involved in anything.

I asked him if he would like to go into the House of Lords, an idea which excited him very much. He is fifty-two or fifty-three, a year older than me, and we all have to begin looking forward. I think Crosland’s illness and impending death is making everyone think a bit about the future.

Then he talked a little bit about politics, about how Mrs Thatcher was a radical, that John Biffen would probably be Chancellor, Howe would get the Woolsack and that she would be a great reformer. This is the Tory line now. He didn’t think there was a shift to the right at all, and of course he is the great architect of the notion of ‘left-wing extremists’ and all that. In all his broadcasts it is always the left-wing, the left-wing, the left-wing.

I didn’t try to be provocative and it wasn’t a very memorable lunch, but an agreeable one.

Brian Flowers came at 6.15 and stayed for an hour and a half; I really enjoyed it and I somewhat poured my heart out to him. ‘Look, I really want your help because the whole nuclear thing is getting out of control. The lobby has got me by the neck; I don’t know what to do about it. But I do want a new scientific adviser.’ He said, ‘You’re right to remove Marshall – you can’t have Marshall as both scientific adviser and Deputy Chairman of the AEA.’ He suggested Sir Hermann Bondi from Defence, who would like to come, but Rampton doesn’t want him.

We talked about civil liberties, the way in which the lobby was working, and how it might be checked and watched. It was candid and extremely friendly.

Thursday 17 February

Cabinet began at 10.50. On foreign affairs, David Owen sat in for Tony, who is lying literally on his death bed in Radcliffe Infirmary. David said that messages had reached him that Vorster, the South African Prime Minister, thought that Smith would accept black majority rule in Rhodesia in two years.

On President Idi Amin of Uganda, Peter Shore asked for more information about the killing of an archbishop and two Ministers, in effect by Amin. The men had ‘confessed’ to plotting against Amin, and I think he had then arrested the three men, and said later they had died trying to escape.

Peter asked, ‘Do we have to have Amin at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference?’

So Jim said, ‘Well, there is not much we can do. We are not the ones who invite people to the Conference. It is the Commonwealth Secretariat.’

Of course in the back of our minds is the possibility that if we did keep him out, which I suppose we are entitled to do, he might kill every English man and woman in Uganda as a reprisal. He is a brute.

Saturday 19 February

Heard on the 7 o’clock news that Tony Crosland died earlier this morning. It is extremely sad. He was so very good to me, taught me economics, helped me get a seat, was kind to me in Parliament, and under that gruff and arrogant exterior he really had a heart of gold. I liked him very much. I know other people didn’t, and I was often critical and scornful of him and thought all this intellectual stuff was much overdone, but he did, through his book, have a profound influence. He was the high priest of revisionism or social democracy in the Labour Party for a generation, and the book will be studied and read long after his death.

Sunday 20 February

Melissa’s twentieth birthday, bless her. She is such a lovely girl and she is a great source of pride to the family. She got all her presents and was thrilled.

The papers today are jam-packed with obituaries and tributes to Tony Crosland.

Roy Jenkins rated him above any living socialist philosopher. The rest of the papers went into an emotional spasm about him. I must say when I read it all it struck me that, all right, he was a very nice guy, he wrote a good book, but if I look back over his political career I can’t honestly say his judgement was particularly good. Certainly
The Future of Socialism
misread the underlying crisis in a capitalist economy.

And, I had better be candid, I felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought of the guy who was going to be appointed to the Foreign Office tomorrow by Jim Callaghan. I suppose like anybody else I am ambitious and feel it is a bit hard to take if others are jumped above me.

Monday 21 February

To the House, and heard that David Owen had been made Foreign Secretary at the age of thirty-eight – a fantastic promotion. I must say it entertains me slightly that Roy Hattersley, David Ennals, Eric Varley and even Merlyn Rees and Shirley Williams have not got that job. Jim has created a new star in the Labour Movement and he has got another twenty-five years to go. If you begin as Foreign Secretary at thirty-eight you are an absolutely dominating figure.

Well, had a chat in the House of Commons, came home. Judith Hart has been brought back in as Minister of Overseas Development, and Frank Judd
has been moved to the Foreign Office as number two to David Owen, which was quite a skilful move, and Joel Barnett has been put in the Cabinet.

I saw Merlyn as I was leaving and he said, ‘What do you think of what Jim has done? Don’t you think it proves that foreign affairs don’t matter any more, compared to the economy?’ I said, ‘Not at all. Of course they’re important. First of all, economic problems are now very largely seen as international, and secondly the Foreign Secretary has got an absolutely crucial job to do in setting our relationship with the Common Market. Are we to be a major nation or are we going to be submerged into a federation? These are crucial questions.’ Merlyn was taken aback a bit, and I said I was delighted for David.

Tuesday 22 February

In the Commons there was the vote on the guillotine motion to limit the time available for the Scotland and Wales Bill and we were defeated by twenty-nine. Twenty-two Labour MPs, I think, voted with the Tories, quite a number abstained, and we were absolutely smashed.

It is a very big political event because we won’t get the Bill through now. The Government will have to think about what it is going to do. It is a major defeat. The Scottish Nationalists are absolutely furious. Quite what will happen in Scotland and Wales I don’t know. It could become a nasty situation, very quickly.

Wednesday 23 February

Caroline and I went to dinner with the Speaker. First time I had ever been to the Speaker’s flat in the House of Commons – you go up in a little lift above the state rooms. The other guests were Bill Rodgers, Merlyn, Cledwyn Hughes, Joel Barnett and wives. I felt a terrible sense of gloom. There were all the pro-Market people, all Cabinet Ministers, and I didn’t enjoy it; I don’t think Caroline did much either. I do like George Thomas, and I get on well with Joel and the others, but I felt the one thing you couldn’t discuss was politics. Here we were at a political dinner and there was no possibility of a really political discussion between us. I was very quiet.

Thursday 24 February

After the Cabinet I went straight to Broadcasting House to make a programme with Keith Joseph. Keith is an absolutely tortured soul – he was in agony, his face twisted in anxiety, his head in his hands. He was scribbling notes, and worrying; he really is a sick man. We talked about Heath, and the U turn, and what Heath’s Cabinets were like; Keith said most discussions took place in Cabinet committees, there was a sort of Inner Cabinet and the Cabinet as a whole did not discuss very much. Keith Joseph himself realised his mistake about policy and now favoured more open government. I tried to be jolly and cheerful. Then we went and recorded a 45-minute discussion.