The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 (79 page)

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘a very good idea.’ Well actually it was a lousy idea because, as I had said at the time, if the Queen attended the Cabinet, when the Cabinet became unpopular she would become unpopular, and she didn’t want to be mixed up with us. Secondly the idea of an aggrieved citizen writing to a member of the royal household was absurd.

‘In Saudi Arabia, you know, King Khalid holds court every day. People come and say, “Your Majesty, I haven’t got a telephone”, and he raises it with his Ministers. That is what the monarchy should be like,’ said the Duke.

The Queen did make one interesting comment. ‘We had the heads of the
Common Market here to dinner the other night, and Helmut Schmidt was so rude.’

I said, ‘He always is.’

‘Yes, but they were all so cynical and disillusioned and he was so rude and unfriendly.’

That confirmed what I have long suspected: that the royal family loathe the Common Market because they have no role in it. There is no European President’s Council in which Queen Juliana can meet the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg: they have no forum and therefore are driven back into a quaint tourist role.

Wednesday 6 July

I should mention that Jack Jones was defeated overwhelmingly at the TGWU Conference. They voted for no pay restraint or limitation on free collective bargaining whatsoever in the coming year. Jack took it well.

Tuesday 19 July

I had a talk with Harry Evans of the
Sunday Times
in the evening. He thought the Government would fall this autumn and that Thatcher sensed power; without Phase 3 there would be nothing to keep Labour in power. There was a chance Thatcher would be in power by Christmas but he wasn’t sure whether she would win if we stayed in for another year. He thought the Lib–Lab Pact might fold. We are in difficulties over wage claims: there is no doubt about that.

After he had gone I saw David Owen about breaches of sanctions of BP in Rhodesia. He wanted to know whether it had been brought to me personally; I said it had and I had asked for names.

Wednesday 20 July

This evening I saw Bill van Straubenzee, the Tory MP, walking by Mother’s flat. We had a chat and he thought there would be an Election this winter. ‘Mrs Thatcher is much better than people imagine. Now there is no pay policy and she has nothing to lose, she will be dead set on being Prime Minister, and the City and the businessmen will support her in that. She is a very competent woman indeed.’

I asked him if he thought Ted Heath would get a job under Mrs Thatcher.

He said, ‘No, he has behaved very badly.’

‘If Thatcher were defeated in an Election, would you get rid of her?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘we are much less generous than you are.’ He was certain that Ted Heath wouldn’t succeed her but Willie Whitelaw might. ‘The man to watch,’ he said, ‘is Francis Pym.’

‘I presume that if Carrington were in the Commons he would get it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But Francis Pym is a quiet chap coming up.’

Friday 29 July

Today the
Daily Express
had a fantastic story – Chapman Pincher saying that MI5 had bugged Harold Wilson. The whole security story is now breaking, and this was bound to come to the surface one day.

The Cabinet met at Number 10 for a discussion on Europe which I had suggested at Chequers, and it was one of the most remarkable Cabinets I have ever attended.

I took my cameras because I do feel at this period in my life that I should go on recording various events. So I was feeling cheerful, but we’d only just sat when Jim said, ‘Well, I think it’s hardly worth having this meeting at all. The whole document that we are discussing today has been leaked to the
Financial Times,
clearly by a member of this Cabinet. And there is an article in today’s
Guardian
in which John Silkin has said that the Common Agricultural Policy proves that crime does pay.’

Just at that point, when tempers were at fever pitch, somebody came in and said there was another closure vote at the House. So we all scooped up our papers and leapt into our cars like a lot of Hell’s Angels to go over to the House of Commons.

I talked to David Owen there and he said, ‘I don’t take this very seriously. I think this is psychological warfare by Jim to get us all to pull together.’

I went back to Number 10 at about 11 and sat around with the rest of the Cabinet. Then I realised that Jim hadn’t arrived yet and I had a supreme opportunity. So I took my first movies and a few stills in the Cabinet Room.

It soon became dear that we were not going to meet again in Number 10, so we were all moved back to the House and finally began at 11.30. Jim opened by saying the most important thing was Party unity and that we must preserve our internationalism.

At one stage Jim had to leave because Mrs Thatcher had demanded an immediate statement about the bugging at Number 10. Jim said, ‘I don’t want any of you to come to the House – it will make it too big an event. I want to go in alone, deal with the question and leave.’

So the rest of us went over to Number 10 for drinks, and I had a word with David Owen and Merlyn Rees about the bugging. David controls MI6 and Merlyn MI5 and they both said, ‘We control the security services completely; the people at the top are very decent; you would be surprised about how good and decent they are. Some of them you would know, but of course you wouldn’t know what they did. It is quite untrue and Harold Wilson is absolutely paranoid.’

‘Of course,’ said Merlyn, ‘there is electronic surveillance at Number 10 but that is so nobody can get in.’

‘How did the story come out?’ I asked.

They said MI5 were angry that Harold Wilson appeared to be going to dinner parties, getting tight and telling people that MI5 had muddled up David Owen with Will Owen and Judith Hart with Mrs J. Tudor Hart. ‘It’s
quite untrue,’ said David Owen. ‘They never muddled us up. They are getting back at him to frighten him by saying they bugged him.’

I said, ‘I hope you do keep them under control. I was at a dinner in 1971 when Harold told the CBI that the Government bugged the TUC.’

‘Oh,’ said Merlyn, striking his head with the palm of his hand, ‘how awful; he should never have said that’ – which indicated that Merlyn knew.

I went on, ‘Bryan Stanley told Ray Buckton in the 1972 strike that the ASLEF locomen were bugged.’

‘Well, it may be true that at some periods in industrial disputes that does happen,’ Merlyn replied.

‘Yes,’ said David, ‘I always thought during the seamen’s strike it was done.’

So I pursued it. ‘Take another case. When I wanted to appoint Jack Jones to the National Enterprise Board, I was told he was a security risk. When I asked to see the report they withdrew their objection. And in the
Sunday Times
the other day it said all the trade union leaders are bugged. You’ve got a lot of experience of it, Merlyn, you have been in Northern Ireland, where the situation is kept under very tight control. You must know how these things happen.’

‘Yes, I am sure I am told.’

David added, ‘I have been through it very carefully, and nothing would be done without my knowing.’

Of course I don’t believe that, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of mentioning my own experience to them.

Cabinet resumed at 2.45 in the PM’s room and we were told to limit ourselves to three minutes each. I said, ‘Here we are meeting to consider a paper by David Owen on the Common Market, yet we do not have before us the NEC documents which were cleared on Wednesday and on which they have worked for a year. We are not even considering what they said. Similarly, David Owen’s paper has not been made available to the NEC.’

Jim said, ‘Well, the Government must govern. I can’t have government papers put to the Executive.’

‘But, PM,’ I said, ‘when the 1972 Industry Group of sympathetic industrialists prepared a report on industrial strategy, you set up a Cabinet committee to look at it. Never in my whole life do I remember the Cabinet ever taking NEC documents seriously or setting up committees to look at them. They just don’t come to us.’

Jim, red-faced, pointed his finger at me. ‘You are working against us.’

‘That is a very serious thing to say. I have been in the Cabinet over many years and I don’t remember a Prime Minister ever saying such a thing to a Cabinet colleague. If you believe that is the case, you have the remedy in your own hands.’

‘Well, maybe I shall have to take the necessary action,’ Jim replied.

I said, ‘You have the power to decide who is in and out of your Cabinet
and, I promise you, if I personally were your only problem, you wouldn’t have a problem.’

‘You are leading a faction against us,’ Jim retorted.

‘If you want my honest opinion, I am quite happy to go along with David Owen’s general approach, but I want to see this country restored to itself, with the right to govern itself by its own legislation. That is what I think is important. You hear all this about our parliamentary democracy being undermined by Marxists or by extending the public sector, but the plain truth is that it has been undermined by Brussels. It may take twenty years to do it but I want to work to restore to the British people the power to govern themselves and then to work for others.’

The tension was electric. Bill Rodgers said, ‘If others are going to speak on the Common Market question before Conference, then I am going to speak.’

‘We don’t want any more speeches,’ said Denis, and David Ennals wanted an assurance that everybody would shut up.

I came in again. ‘I remember well during the Referendum of 1975 that Shirley Williams said that if the vote went against the Market she would withdraw from public life.’

So Denis chimed in, ‘You promised to abide by the Referendum and you have broken your word.’

All of a sudden a wave of hatred engulfed the room. It turned into a personal clash between Jim and me with odd interruptions. Stan Orme interjected, ‘I won’t have Tony Benn pilloried in this way, he is quite entitled to his view’, and Michael Foot remarked, ‘Tony reflects a very important element in the Party’s thinking which has to be taken into account.’ It was an amazing scene.

Jim finally said, ‘I don’t know what Tony Benn intends to do. We’ve had no clear answer from him as to what he intends to do.’

Harold Lever said, ‘On the limitations of European legislation on the British Parliament, this situation is no different from the IMF or NATO or GATT.’

‘But it
is
different,’ I argued, ‘because those bodies do not have the power to change the laws of this country. I sat at a committee the other day with John Silkin when we were told that the Ministers were behaving illegally and that is a complete change. My advice, PM, because I don’t want a confrontation any more than you do, is to let the Party and the Government decide their respective views and then reach a compromise. If you force the NEC to climb down it will lead to a confrontation.’

Well, that was it, and the Cabinet adjourned. I had a word with Michael and Stan and John Silkin and they said, ‘For God’s sake, keep your mouth shut!’ We walked back and I told Stan that I was surprised more than angry, genuinely surprised, because I thought it had been a constructive meeting up until the row. I was a bit shaken, and David Owen said, ‘Well, you did go
a bit too far, when you held the press conference on the Common Market Safeguards Committee.’

Saturday 30 July

To Bristol for my surgery, which lasted five and a half hours. There were complaints about Hell’s Angels; parents from a Catholic school whose headmaster had been suspended by the Avon Education Committee, who thought he was mad and wanted him to see a psychiatrist; an old man of eighty-two who took down his trousers and made me examine the shrapnel wound in his hip from 1916, and so on.

The news tonight reported that Harold Wilson has demanded an inquiry into Chapman Pincher’s statement that MI5 bugged Number 10. That means we are going to have a tremendous silly-season debate about something of crucial importance.

Sunday 31 July

In the afternoon Caroline and I went for a lovely three-mile walk right round Shepherd’s Bush and back.

Monday 1 August

The story of the Wilson bugging was still running in the press. Chapman Pincher had commented that the security services were perfectly entitled to bug even a Prime Minister if they thought he was engaged in a Communist conspiracy. A most interesting admission.

Tuesday 2 August

This morning Frances Morrell rang to say that the
Evening Standard
had asked her which of my children was having treatment in the private wing of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. It turned out that in today’s first edition of
The Times
the diary column had contained a report to that effect and that we were using Caroline’s maiden name. I must say I blew my top.

I rang
The Times
, made them read me the first edition, and wrote it down. Then I wrote a letter after about a dozen drafts. Arthur Davidson, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers, assured me the report was defamatory, so I sent the letter round to the Editor and rang up to be sure it had arrived. Rees-Mogg came to the phone and said he would publish the letter and a retraction and apology tomorrow. I let it go at that, but, I must say, this really stirred me. It’s the third absolutely blatant lie this year.

Frances was most helpful. She’s at her best on these occasions and suggested I prepare a dossier and send it over to Stuart Weir, the deputy editor of
New Society
, who promised to do a piece on it. So this I did. It’s not possible to convey my anger adequately.

The
Evening Standard
and the
Daily Express
rang up during the day to ask if the story was true. I mustn’t get obsessive about the press, like Harold
Wilson, or paranoid, saying Smear, Smear, because that’s destructive. But I won’t let them tell lies.

Anyway at 3.30 Dick Clements came over for a talk. He mentioned that the
Tribune
correspondent, on talking to one or two of the police at Grunwick, had received the impression that in arresting Scargill and Audrey Wise they were punishing the Labour Government for holding their pay back. That was an interesting story – quite a new dimension.