The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  Drove to Oxford for the Nuffield College dance. Caroline came down by train from London and we had dinner with David Butler beforehand in his rooms. Nuffield is vigorous and forward-looking. It has absolute equality between men and women and dose camaraderie between teacher and student. It draws its Fellows from a wide social background. There is no snobbery about it at all.

  Tuesday 7 January 1958

  Today’s sensational news of Thorneycroft’s resignation has reawakened everyone to politics again with a bang.

  The political implications of this resignation are not hard to see. The question at stake was whether the Government’s economic policy should be carried to the point where the structure of the welfare state was to be partially dismantled. The Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet shrank from a course of action which would have such grave political consequences. Thorneycroft was willing to wield the axe even against the Social Services.

  Inside the Conservative Party therefore, this is a left versus right struggle. The Butler wing have won a tactical victory over the wild men of the City. We should all be grateful for small mercies but the consequences for the Conservative Party need to be assessed.

  There is already a nucleus of disgruntled right-wingers inside the ranks of the Tory MPs. They first appeared in 1954 as the Suez Group. During the war against Egypt in November 1956 they thought they had captured the Prime Minister. Then came the sell-out and the humiliation of the evacuation. Eight of them resigned the Whip and decided to sit as Independents. They are still there in open opposition.

  Now Thorneycroft, Birch and Powell are thrown up as real leaders of this dissident group. The financial issues on which they have resigned will attract the support of the Independent Conservatives. And the Cyprus problem looms up right ahead.

  Tuesday 10 February

  To Lime Grove for Nye Bevan’s TV party political programme. Nye arrived a bit late and was just impossible for the first three-quarters of an hour. He launched into an attack on the BBC for bias, distortion and discrimination against himself and all the rest. It was an ignorant attack, so easily refuted by the facts. The atmosphere was extremely tense and I was unhappy since I could not support him. The programme was going to be terrible if this went on. To make it worse, Nye wouldn’t drink anything before the broadcast so he was on edge even more.

  Then between, the steak and the cheese we got on to farming. Nye, the farmer, mellowed before our eyes. On grazing and pigs and subsidies he found common ground with Gerald Beadle. He began to laugh and do imitations of Tom Williams, who was our Minister of Agriculture, and by the time he came up for the first run-through the tears were running down his cheeks with good humour and giggly laughter. NOTE: Nye must never do another broadcast without having some of his intimate friends there beforehand to keep him sweet.

  The show itself was very good, I thought. Reckoning the limitations we had to face, a talk with a lot of young people was undoubtedly the best projection of his personality. The Daily Telegraph next morning said it was the best Labour Party political yet.

  Thursday 20 February

  Had a talk to Frank Barlow at the Commons. He told me that some sections of the Party (Jim Callaghan, Tony Greenwood, Alf Robens and Nye) were sick to death of my campaign on the peerage and were being very rude about it. This plunged me into depression.

  Nye Bevan opened the debate today. Apparently he made a most appalling speech – his worst flop yet. He tried to explain what he had said at the Conference at Brighton about the H-bomb. All he succeeded in doing was alienating his new friends as well as his old ones.

  Friday 21 February

  To dinner with Cecil King at the Dorchester, with a lot of commerical TV tycoons. I must say they thoroughly irritated me. Here were these extremely powerful men who were not interested in programmes as such but only in making money. The whole conversation was the financial carve-up of the world. I came away feeling that the public-accountability issue is a really important, live one. Couldn’t all public companies be put in the same position as nationalised industries and made subject to directions from a Minister in the public interest? I shall do some work on this.

  Monday 3 March

  At 7 o’clock in the Division Lobby I saw Geoffrey de Freitas and asked for a word with him privately. He knew what it was about before we had sat down in the Members’ Lobby. I asked to be relieved of the responsibility of being No. 2 on Air matters. I explained that I had had many anxious hours of thought about it (as indeed I have) and that I had come to one definite conclusion: under no circumstances would it be right or sensible for Britain to use the hydrogen bomb. I said I did not know yet in my own mind what the right course of action was, but I could not conscientiously be the spokesman of a policy with which I was in disagreement.

  Geoffrey was very sweet. He said he absolutely understood my view and the motives that had prompted it. He said he wished he could be relieved of the burden of the Air Force but there was nobody willing to do it. I pointed out that it wasn’t reluctance to do the donkey work that influenced me, and he understood that. We left it that he would tell the Chief Whip that I was from that moment discharged.

  Without making too much of this it was, of course, a tiny resignation and may not be popular in high quarters. But I really can’t help that. If one allowed oneself to be dragged along doing something one thinks is wrong, it would be hopeless.

  Friday 7 March

  To Bristol this evening for a meeting in support of the South African Treason Trial Defence Fund organised by the MCF. About a hundred people turned up in the Grand Hotel to watch the film African Conflict made by Howard Smith for CBS. We raised £25 for the fund. More important even than the money was the feeling that a little group of Bristolians who had never been to South Africa were expressing solidarity with these people on trial for their beliefs.

  Saturday 8 March

  This evening we went to dinner with Enoch Powell, who resigned with Thorneycraft over public expenditure. He and I had a long post-mortem on Suez. As he was a member of the ‘Suez Group’ at the time of the Canal Zone Base Agreement in 1954, I naturally took him to have been a violent supporter of Eden in 1956. But as it turned out I was quite wrong, and for a most interesting reason. His argument ran like this. ‘To be a great empire, sustained by military strength, requires military bases at strategic points. In 1954 Eden tried to pretend to us that we could still be a great military power without maintaining by force a base in Egypt. I said then that that was hypocrisy and humbug. When Nasser nationalised the Canal I was proved right. But by then it was too late to get it back. World opinion would not have it, and militarily we could not do it. I therefore watched with amused detachment the outbreak of hysteria from July to October which had come two years too late to be effective. I didn’t think it was right or could be successful to attempt to invade and get back what we had lost. As far as the position now is concerned, we have given up the means by which we can maintain our empire by force.’

  This is not an exact quote, of course, but a précis of his argument.

  Wednesday 12 March

  To Torrington for the by-election this evening. The first meeting drew in six people. The Chairman said it was because of a Methodist film show in the village hall. It was a more original excuse than the weather, which is always too bad for people to come out or so good that they’re gardening: I just sat and got them to put questions to me.

  Back to Exeter by car dog-tired, and to bed at once without a meal.

  Friday 14 March

  Still extremely depressed. No particular reason, but on the trade cycle theory of ups and downs, a down has been due for some time.

  Tuesday 1 April

  Messaoud came in a great state of excitement to finalise the resolution for tonight’s meeting in the Caxton Hall, which was a tremendous success. The Tunisian, Moroccan and Libyan Ambassadors were there in person and also various other Ministers from Afghanistan and the Lebanon and so on. About 600 people crowded the
hall and there was a small overflow meeting of about 50. The speakers were not really all that good and the meeting flagged a bit until Barbara Castle gave it a fillip at the end. But we collected £305 for Algerian relief and this in itself justified the meeting. I did the appeal and felt rather pleased.

  Tuesday 15 April

  Parliament met today and it was Budget Day. I didn’t go in at all as our new baby showed signs of arriving last night and really seems imminent. I missed the vote on the budget as a result and am in trouble with the Chief Whip!

  Tuesday 29 April

  Caroline went into hospital this morning with labour pains. It’s quite a relief to have her under dose medical attention though I shall miss her daily judgement on affairs very much. Our half-hour survey of the day each evening is always the stabilising and comforting part of the day.

  To Lime Grove for the party political broadcast. After the show Hugh Cudlipp invited us back to his house in Cheyne Walk. It is the most charming place, overlooking the river. His wife, Eileen Ascroft, is the fashion editor of one of the evening papers. She’s a rather catlike creature – an impression strengthened by tight black slacks and a leopardskin blouse. We stood around and talked and listened to gramophone records. Hugh Cudlipp conducted his favourite pieces from opera and kept insisting that we should hear just one more side. It bored me stiff after a time, but although everyone else felt the same no one had the courage to go first. So I decided to leave at about 12.30. But no bed till 2.15, for Dave was here for the night and there was lots to talk about.

  Friday 9 May

  Working at home this morning with the usual round of chores: reading The Times, answering letters, sorting my papers and the rest. The phone rang: ‘This is Hammersmith Hospital. Your wife has had a beautiful baby boy.’ And so after ten days of waiting, all is well. Caroline wouldn’t let them tell me that they were inducing it today. She didn’t want me to worry. But, of course, not having paced the room for three hours meant I didn’t earn my relief.

  I rushed over to the hospital in time to see her wheeled in on a trolley from the labour ward to her room. She was very well and happy. Later that evening I met Joshua. He looks just like the others, with straggling, waving, crinkly fingers which are always exercising in front of his face. Once he opened his eyes and closed them again with an expression which reminded me irresistibly of Gilbert Harding.

  In between two visits to hospital I went to see the Sultan of Lahej. He is a very well-groomed man of thirty-six who speaks perfect English and has an aristocractic bearing; he is the direct descendant of a line of Sultans of Lahej going back 250 years.

  Not knowing exactly how to begin, I simply asked if he would explain the situation that has arisen. He began talking and we weren’t able to get away for two and a half hours. We frequently interrupted him with questions, to which he gave a frank answer.

  Tuesday 27 May

  The French situation is now critical. Civil war seems quite likely. On top of this de Gaulle issued a statement today saying he was forming a government but a lot is going on under the surface. One does not know whether de Gaulle is coming in by a coup or whether by abject surrender of the politicians.

  It looks as if the lights are going out in France.

  Wednesday 4 June

  To Television House for a run-through of a new programme I’ve been asked to take over on an experimental basis. The idea stems from My Fair Lady and Pygmalion. Does accent really betray background? ATV have got together two members of the Faculty of University College, London: Dr Fry, the Head of the Phonetics Department and Mr Trim, a lecturer. They have added a woman called Dr Eisler, a psychologist doing research at UCL. I am the chairman. The idea is to play over a one-minute recording of a voice and then for seven or eight minutes the Panel discuss it and say all they can think of about it: what region, what origin, what occupation, what age, what build, what height, what features, what sort of clothes, everything. A cartoonist draws as the team decide and finally the person appears. Then follows a post-mortem.

  We had a run-through with about five recordings and then met the people. Two were absolutely spot on. It was almost uncanny. Two were pretty wrong and one was half and half. But it was tremendous fun to do and what pleased me was that I was almost as good as they were. They are a very nice crowd.

  Monday 23 June

  To dinner with Mr and Mrs Edward Sieff and the Tynans. He is ‘Mr Marks and Spencer’. Ken Tynan is a contemporary of mine from Oxford. After dinner when the women had gone, we sat for an hour talking politics. Ken was a real ‘eighteen-year-old Red’. Of course I don’t keep up with these things but I gather that he is a leading Angry Young Man. He pressed on me afterwards the view that young people were looking for a new lead. He thought they were sick of both parties and really wanted something that took them outside themselves and made them feel there was something worth worrying and thinking about.

  This conversation set my mind on to the general political problem that faces this country. The population of the world will be 7,000 million in the next forty years – far and away the greatest part being in Asia. That fact and the tremendous industrialisation in China and India will turn Britain into a little Denmark. How are we to adjust ourselves to this new world without becoming wildly frustrated and defeatist and bitter and apathetic? This problem of power contraction does threaten our political system. Someone said the Angry Young Men were a symptom of the shrinking pains of the British Empire. The answer probably lies in two things – a widening of Britain’s horizons so that we can get satisfaction from the achievements of others, and a domestic revolution to modernise ourselves. It presents a serious psychological problem for politicians.

  Wednesday 9 July

  Today Stephen and Hilary came to the Houses of Parliament. The trip had been long planned and as luck would have it the weather was simply super. Their hair had been specially cut and they looked very tidy. They behaved simply beautifully. We saw the Speaker’s Procession and then went to the Lords to await Tappa (Father). Black Rod put us in the Diplomatic Gallery and then waved to the boys. We met him later in the Lobby and he was so friendly. The boys had seen him on television and were very interested in his buckle shoes and nylon stockings. Then we went to the Commons where they were put in the special gallery behind the peers. Father sat in the row in front and I took my place. Those tiny heads with the hair so short just poked above the back of the seat and looked like two little eggs all ready to fall like Humpty-Dumpty. We met a lot of people and went over to the Jewel Tower before we had strawberries and cream on the terrace. They were so excited. I was so proud. We also went to the Control Room and watched the Commons through the periscope. I almost forgot. Wherever they went Father said, ‘These boys’ father, grandfather, and both great-grandfathers have sat in the Commons.’ It’s quite something.

  Tuesday 15 July

  Father had Paul Robeson and his wife to tea at Lords. I didn’t know what to expect. I wondered if he would be an embittered Red, but my doubts were dispelled in five seconds. I have never been more quickly attracted to a personality than I was to his. He is a giant of a man, towering above us all, and has a most mobile face and greying hair. He was immensely easy to talk to. You only had to mention a song of his (or of anyone else’s) for him to begin singing very softly. It was just too tempting for us to go through the ones we liked best, and it was irresistible for him to sing them. I thought it might be embarrassing to have him singing in the Lords’ Tea Room but he did it so naturally and so softly that it was only properly audible a few feet away. Beyond that it must have reverberated like some tube train passing deep beneath the building.

  Afterwards I took him to the Commons Gallery for a moment and through the lobbies down to the Terrace. It was a journey of triumph. Everybody gathered round – MPs, police, visitors, waitresses from the Tea Room – for unlike most celebrities who make you want to stare, Paul Robeson made you want to shake him by the hand. Two negro women from Florida were almost ready
to embrace him. A jet-black Nigerian was touched as if by a magic wand, and nearly split his face with a smile. You just couldn’t help feeling that he was a friend of everyone there. He greeted people as if he knew them and those he really knew he remembered. There was no hint of embarrassment, whoever it was who came up. Herbert Morrison shook him by the hand on the way out and as we marched down St Stephen’s Hall the crowds queueing for the Strangers’ Gallery stood and lined the route as if it were a triumphal march.

  Thursday 17 July

  I did a very rare thing for me nowadays and went into the Smoking Room for a drink and a gossip for an hour and a half. Nye was there and Dick Crossman, Dingle Foot, Curly Mallalieu and Sir Tom O’Brien.

  In the other corner was the Prime Minister sitting and gossiping with his cronies. At the table next to him was Winston, looking much as ever but a bit more shaky. It really is exciting to feel that one is in the middle of events and the Smoking Room after a great debate has an atmosphere that is very thrilling.

  Tuesday 2 September

  The Notting Hill race riots trouble continued last night. I toured the area before breakfast and saw the debris and the corrugated iron up behind the windows of the prefabs where the coloured families live. The use of petrol bombs and iron bars and razors is appalling. There is a large area where it is not safe for people to be out. I saw Chief Inspector Simmonds at Notting Hill police station for a short talk. He is confident that the police can handle it.

  This afternoon I toured the area again by car and even at 5 o’clock there was an ugly atmosphere and people hurried along the streets. The Labour Party really must say something about this.

  Tuesday 30 September

  By train to Scarborough this morning for the Labour Party Conference. Everyone in the related fields of politics, journalism, television and diplomacy are all in one place at one time. That’s what makes Conference such fun.

  Wednesday 1 October

  Harold Wilson made an excellent speech today in the economics debate. He is certainly Number 3 in the party now.