by Tony Benn
Labour has not “abandoned hope.” It would make a fresh effort, and, in particular, would propose to other nations the complete abolition of all national air forces, the effective international control of civil aviation and the creation of an international air force.
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I also distributed a leaflet issued by the Mineworkers Federation (fore-runner of the NUM) describing the deaths and injuries in the pits in the nine years following the general strike when the coal owners were dominant and were supported by the National Government. Having kept it in my archives I had it copied and reissued it, fifty years later during the miners’ strike in 1984–5, as a warning of what was at stake.
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THE PRICE OF COAL
7,839 KILLED
1,200,042 INJURED
That is the price of Coal for the years 1927–34. The dead include 231 boys under 16, 320 lads between 16 and 18, and 294 lads between 18 and 20. The killed and injured include 199,612 lads and boys under 20.
GREATER OUTPUT
LOWER WAGES
The output of coal per man per shift has increased by nearly a third since 1924, but wages per
man have gone down by nearly a sixth. Thousands receive less than 40/- per week.
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THE MINERS’ CLAIM
THE MINERS CLAIM AN EXTRA 2/- PER SHIFT, THEY OFFER TO ABIDE BY THE DECISION OF INDEPENDENT ARBITRATORS.
——THE COALOWNERS HAVE REFUSED INDEPENDENT ARBITRATION.
——THE “NATIONAL” GOVERNMENT HAS ALSO REFUSED TO TAKE ACTION.
——THE “NATIONAL” GOVERNMENT IS ALWAYS ON THE SIDE OF THE COALOWNERS.
THE MINERS DEMAND A LIVING WAGE
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My first visit to the House of Commons was on 22 February 1937 to see Father take his seat for Gorton, which he had won in a by-election that month. He introduced me to Lloyd George, and to Clement Attlee, who had become the new Labour leader.
Going back to 1932, after the General Election my parents decided to visit Marburg in Germany for two months, where Father wished to learn German and Mother continued to study Hebrew. My mother described how suspicious the German authorities were of her interest in Judaism. It was on the eve of Hitler coming to power, and my parents came back with vivid accounts of the conduct of the Hitler Youth and the danger that was posed to democracy; they brought back with them a vinyl record of the Nazi anthem, the ‘Horst Wessel’ song, which I think I still have somewhere.
I remember listening to one of Hitler’s ranting speeches from Nuremberg being broadcast on the radio, and by the end of the 1930s it was clear that war was inevitable – an idea that had already formed in my mind when I read Mein Kampf, a book I still have on my shelves next to the autobiography of Mussolini (whose ideas are now back in fashion with the neo-conservatives who have reappeared in the West). I also have in my possession a booklet issued by the Home Office in 1938 entitled ‘The Protection of your house against air-raids’, which advised: ‘… if the head of the house will consider himself as “captain of the ship” and put these air raid precautions into effect the principal object of this book will have been achieved’. From that it was clear that war was considered a serious possibility. When, aged fourteen and a half, I sat at Stansgate and listened to Neville Chamberlain’s announcement that we were at war with Germany, it was with a great deal of foreboding, but a sense of the inevitable.
By 1939 I was at Westminster School, but my first school (in 1931) was a mixed infants called Graham Street School, which was attached to the Frances Holland School for Girls. My main recollection of it is looking with admiration at the big girls, aged seven to eleven, who dominated the place and made us infants feel rather inadequate. I cannot recall many of the teachers, but the head teacher was Miss Morison, who ran the school very efficiently and always took an interest in me, which I appreciated. The fees were thirteen guineas a term; milk and biscuits were three shillings, dancing two and a half guineas, and extra Latin and arithmetic coaching were five shillings an hour.
The other teacher who made an impact on me was Miss Babcock, who taught religious education, and with whom I had a clash at the first class (when I was five). Miss Babcock said in Bible Studies that ‘God was angry’, and I jumped up and said, ‘God is love’. As a result of this, I was sent to an empty classroom during all her lessons to read some child’s book about the Bible. Miss Babcock explained to my mother, ‘The trouble with Anthony is that when I begin, he begins!’ I still remember the misery of sitting in that room on my own.
I sympathise with Miss Babcock now, but at the time she was a fearsome woman with a bun, who frightened me. Unfortunately, she did not deal with the main problem – that I was too talkative.
The only prize I ever won at school was the Toplady Prize for Divinity at Westminster and I still have the book – a Bible – with the inscription inside it. I wasn’t very clever at school and my parents did not take much interest in my progress.
My school reports from the Graham Street School started off quite well: ‘Writing: Good and careful’; ‘French: Très bien’; ‘History: Very good’; ‘Conduct: Very good’. But by 1932 a note of disapproval had crept in: ‘Writing: This needs great care’; ‘Conduct: Generally very good but is apt to be too noisy and excited.’ At the end of 1932 my conduct was ‘Generally very good but is still lacking self-control’. By the time I left in the summer of 1933, all subjects were reasonably good.
An event I remember clearly at infant school was a nativity play, in which I was allocated a very small role as a shepherd whose job it was to stand quietly at the back. But I told my parents I had a much larger role, and they came to watch the play, though they did not even see me. I got into trouble for pinching the bottom of a shepherdess next to me, whose name I now forget.
I was taken to, and brought home from, school each day by car, driven by Father’s secretary Miss Triggs, who represented Authority. On one occasion she forgot to collect me, and I recall having lunch with the big girls and crying when Miss Triggs turned up to collect me with a peremptory apology.
It was an Anglican school and we used to go out for walks nearby in the Royal Hospital in Chelsea and look at the Chelsea Pensioners in their red coats and tricorne hats; they looked so very old with a mass of medals on their chests, which they would have earned during the First World War and maybe even the Boer War. Every year the Chelsea Flower Show was held there (as now), and we used to see the preparations, although I never actually went to the Flower Show myself.
From there I was moved to a preparatory school known as Gladstone’s, in Cliveden Place, on the other side of Sloane Square, at which we had to wear green blazers and green caps and were marched out for our daily exercise. Mr Gladstone, whom we were told was a relative of the Grand Old Man, looked the part.
Our rival school was Gibbs, whose pupils wore red blazers and caps, and although I do not recall any competitive sporting activity, we saw them as rivals and occasionally passed these red-coated children and congratulated ourselves on being at Gladstone’s. There was also the McPherson gymnasium near the school, where I took part in boxing matches. I fought one boy, Neville Sandelson, who later became a Labour MP and then joined the SDP.
Gladstone’s used to go every week to the Liverpool Victoria Sports Ground at Acton, where we played cricket and football, and it was there that I first saw a helicopter – I think it was actually an autogyro with a circulating blade at the top. On one occasion there was a fathers’ cricket match, which my dad attended, and, in a very mischievous way, when he was sent in to bat, he asked my teacher Mr Leman which end of the bat he should hold. This caused me great embarrassment, much amusement among the teachers and amazement among my fellow pupils.
Sexual education was virtually non-existent and we formed a Sex Society to discuss these matters. When I asked Mother questions she would reply, ‘Darling, it is so beautiful I can’t tell you about it.’ If I asked Father, he would say, ‘Ask you
r mother!’
When Mr Gladstone’s time was coming to an end, the school was renamed Eaton House and moved a few yards along from Sloane Square. One day we were told that the American Ambassador, a Mr Kennedy, had in mind sending his son to the school. This child must have been JFK’s younger brother, although in the event he did not come to the school.
An early political paper: my thoughts on disarmament in 1936
I was allowed to go to Gladstone’s by bus, and a route was planned that permitted me to get there without crossing the road, although it did involve a diversion from the direct route. I was given my fare every morning to pay for the ticket. In those days the buses were owned by different companies – for instance, the red open-decked buses of the General Omnibus Co., and the chocolate-coloured double-deckers owned by Thomas Tilling. I realised that if I took a different route from the one I had been told to take, I could save about tuppence a day and so, without telling my parents, I saved the money and spent it at Woolworths. This was discovered when a bus ticket in my coat revealed that I was not catching the authorised bus route – I had a lot of explaining to do.
I was leader of a group known as the Bennites, and our rivals were led by MacMahon, who organised the MacMahonites. We used to flick bits of paper at each other, using slings with rubber bands, which could sting very sharply at short range.
On one occasion I stole a pencil from a fellow pupil. I was so overcome with guilt that I told my father what I had done and he contacted Mr Leman about it. The importance of telling the truth was instilled in me as an essential requirement, then and throughout life. I subsequently wrote to my father, who must have been away from home in 1935:
Dear Daddy
I got your letter and I am really sorry about the untruth. I have honestly decided to turn over a new leaf … Mr Leman was very kind to me and what he told me impressed me, it was decent of you to get him to talk to me as I realise it was for the good.
At Gladstone’s, I did not particularly excel: ‘English: Too slapdash’; ‘Drawing: No artist but he is keen’; ‘Arithmetic: Rather inaccurate and should be neater’. By the time I was twelve, at the end of 1937, Mr Leman wrote of my general conduct:
Anthony is a little too conscious of ‘Anthony’. He works well and tries hard, but has a tendency to overdo things … Next term I shall watch him with interest – he ought to be good.
From there I went on to Westminster School as a day-boy and, incredible as it is to report, I had to go to school every day in a top hat and tailcoat; I was there from 1938 to 1942. Westminster was equally conservative and we even had the son of the German Ambassador, von Ribbentrop, at the school. My brother Michael was already at Westminster when I moved there, and the dayboys were very fortunate in not having to board in dormitories. I think public-school boys have always found prison easy because the accommodation and discipline are familiar.
Westminster was a very old foundation and I had the experience of prayers in Westminster Abbey every day. I learned the Lord’s Prayer and others in Latin, and they had a comfortable ritual feel. The organ was played by Mr Lofthouse, and the Abbey became a very familiar place to me, although I do not recall going there for services. I do remember watching the coronation of George VI in 1937 from outside the House of Commons.
My housemaster was Mr C. H. Fisher, a very jovial man, who had the responsibility of teaching me about sex. There were no girls at Westminster School, so they continued to be a mystery, although Mr Fisher had taken me aside at the end of one day to give me a clinical explanation. By then I had seen a few bulls, cows and dogs in action, had exchanged smutty stories with my schoolmates and had a fairly clear idea, even though this was never explicitly linked to the species to which I belonged. It was in marked contrast to my own grandchildren’s understanding, because they seem to know every detail from the age of about seven. Mr Fisher was known as Preedy because he smoked Preedy’s tobacco in his pipe; later he married the matron.
Another teacher was Mr Carlton, who later became headmaster, and was known as Coot. On one occasion my father asked Coot to come out with us to the cinema and took us afterwards to a milk bar, which I thought was a night club. Father no doubt chose the milk bar because it was cheap.
Another of our teachers was Mr Wordsworth, known as Siggy, a descendant of the poet. We also had a science teacher called Mr Rudwick, who was known as Beaker, and we called his children ‘Beaker’s experiments’. I didn’t like science; my main interest was politics, although we were never taught it as a subject.
The headmaster of Westminster, Mr J. T. Christie, later became the principal of Jesus College Oxford and was inevitably known as Jesus Christie. He was very tall and he gave us a moral education which he hoped would influence us for the rest of our lives.
One lecture he gave was on the importance of ‘keeping our minds clean’. He said, ‘There are three rooms in your mind: the front room, where your thoughts are known to all your friends. You must keep it clean and tidy. Your back room, where you have private thoughts which you do not need to disclose but also must be clean and pure. If in the basement you keep a lot of smelly vegetables that are rotten, the smell will come up and infect your back room and your front room and you must always remember that.’ One boy, who was known to be homosexual and had a relationship with another pupil, commented on this speech by saying, ‘But I keep my smelly vegetables in the front room!’
There was quite a lot of homosexuality, in the sense that some of the boys were actively gay and others were prepared to go along with it. There was gossip, but not much was made of it. I dare say the headmaster had this in mind when he lectured us.
The school had a rowing team – we rowed from one of the boathouses at Putney. I did of course support Oxford in the boat race because I intended to go there. I enjoyed fencing, and did épée fencing, but was never really enthusiastic about any sport.
I loved the Boy Scouts and my Scout Master, Godfrey Barber, was a pacifist, a good, kind man. We had a Scout camp in Oban, Scotland, and lived in tents. Mr Barber developed a ‘wet latrine’ where, instead of peeing into the ground, he got us to cut a little trench and fill it with pebbles. We stood by the trench and peed into it, protected from public view by a canvas screen just in front of the trench.
When a visiting Scout Commissioner came to see us he made use of this, but totally misunderstood the principle, and stood on the pebbles and peed against the canvas screen. He declared he had never seen such a good Scout latrine!
When I decided that, with the approach of war, I should transfer from the Scouts to the Air Training Corps, Mr Barber was very disappointed. We had an exchange of correspondence about this, in which he wrote:
With regard to the ATC I came to the view that if it must take place simultaneously with scout meetings, boys who feel bound to join would have to leave the troop … So I’m afraid we must lose you, and I expect you will start at the beginning of next term …
Yours ever
S. M.
PS Your journey report, by the way, omitted all bearings and distances.
I felt I should prepare myself for military service. During the war pacifism was a controversial idea, to the extent that the League of Nations Association – an organisation rather like the UN today – was regarded as suspect.
There was a student group at Westminster called UFPF (which stood for the United Front for Progressive Forces), known as the Uff Puffs, which was influenced by the growing anti-fascist movement with which Stafford Cripps was associated. I threw myself into the junior debating society and we discussed the case for and against appeasement; I took a critical view of the Munich settlement that Chamberlain had just negotiated with Hitler.
Westminster School was evacuated, first to Lancing College in Sussex and then, in the summer of 1940 when France fell, to Exeter University.
Although I had an expensive private education, which was normal for upper-middle-class children at the time and was intended to prepare me for a well-paid
job of some kind, I find, on looking back, that it did not help me much in later life. What I learned in the Air Force, as a constituency MP and by observation gave me a far better opportunity of understanding the world in which we live than the schooling that I received.
I was never a great reader at school and cannot remember many books being read to me as a child. I had one book on my shelves called Theras, The Story of an Athenian Boy. I also remember a book that I think my uncle gave me, about two people on a desert island who ended up pricing everything: instead of exchanging potatoes for wood, or whatever, one of the men said, ‘Let’s work out the relative value …’ A sort of textbook for capitalism. And I adored a picture-book called ‘A Naval Alphabet’ with wonderful colour plates.
My attitude towards women – ‘females’, as I called them then – was very backward, as the following reference in my journal for 1942, when I was seventeen, shows:
The theory of friendship with females
I cannot say that I really understand females yet, therefore I am not really qualified to write. What I have found out however I will put down.
Silence, quietness, modesty and honesty count very much. The sort of person required [by females] is one who is very friendly, leaves most of the talking to the other person, speaks not of himself, is scrupulously honest and upright, has a ready sense of humour and who is gentlemanly. That is to say helps them on with their coats, opens the door for them, gives up his seat for them, pays for them everywhere. This is very primitive … and makes females look so as well. Later I may understand them better.
Subsequently I wrote about the difference in my attitude towards boys and girls:
