The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  Thursday 8 October

  Up early and a perfect day. The Gallup poll suggests that the enormous ‘don’t know’ group may be inclining to the right.

  The usual senseless and exhausting visits to 36 polling stations and 30 committee rooms. Shaking hands with the policemen, asking the returning officer how many people have voted, nodding at the clerks, and heading off for the next.

  Finally the usual loudspeaker ‘knocking up’ and a rather quiet end to the day. People were voting earlier. Then to Unity House when the polls closed to remove all the Election equipment from the car, and to the Grand Hotel for a bath and tea and sandwiches.

  Just about 10 the first results begin coming out and it is clear within a short while that the Tories have won and increased their majority. We have gained a bit in Lancashire and Scotland, but otherwise are out. The count is thus very depressing with the Tories crowing and our people very dejected. Indeed my result looked like being in the balance at one stage, and I thought I might have been beaten. But my vote is up 1,000 even though my majority is down 2,000 with a 3 per cent swing.

  The arrangements for the count were appalling, inefficient, long-drawn-out. Back to the Grand Hotel too depressed to watch TV.

  Sunday 11 October

  To the Gaitskells’. Hugh was tired but mellow and said he wanted a holiday, which he deserved. He says it would be a good idea to have a meeting next weekend to review the work of the Election and this will presumably take place under Dick’s auspices. I then proposed that a number of changes should be made, including a political permanent vice-chairman, a new Secretary, a Shadow Leader of the House, new Whips and John Harris on a permanent basis.

  I said that I thought Harold Wilson would be the obvious Shadow Leader of the House if that wasn’t an insuperable difficulty – taking him away from finance. ‘Oh no, not at all – in a way it would suit me nicely,’ said Hugh. He said he intended to appoint younger men to the Front Bench but thought I would get elected to the Shadow Cabinet anyway.

  He also said several times, ‘I’m not prepared to lose another Election for the sake of nationalisation.’ He laid great stress on the disadvantages of the name Labour, particularly on new housing estates, and said, ‘Of course Douglas Jay is going to urge us to adopt a new one.’ I reminded him that the prune had been resuscitated without a change of name by clever selling.

  Hugh also thought we must review our relations with the trade unions, especially the need for greater freedom and in local authorities.

  Dora was bubbling with hate of left and right. She is game!

  Monday 12 October

  To Manchester for a Granada ‘Searchlight’ programme on the next five years with Keith Kyle (who was Liberal, was on the Tory candidates’ list until Suez, campaigned for Liberals in this Election, and joined the Labour Party last week), and journalists Bernard Levin and Paul Johnson, a very defeatist, rootless young man who was saying that we must drop nationalisation, end links with the trade unions and join up with the Liberals. I said that morale was high and that what we wanted was to revitalise the Labour movement by modernising its constitution, driving its policy thinking forward, creating a new Youth Movement, and making the Opposition more effective.

  Flew home to London and saw Roy Jenkins on ‘Panorama’ advocating very modestly that you should drop nationalisation, watch out for the dangers of the union links and not rule out an association with the Liberals.

  He dropped in here with Jennifer on his way back home and we had a flaming row. As a matter of fact I was very calm and collected and he got into a semi-hysterical state. Usually it’s the other way round. ‘We must use this Election shock to drop nationalisation entirely at this forthcoming Conference,’ he said, and I concentrated on the dangers to our integrity if we were to be so reckless. In the end he half apologised for his temper and went off.

  Wednesday 21 October

  Tea with Harold Wilson, who is extremely bitter. Hugh certainly has failed to keep us together.

  Tuesday 10 November

  Peter and Liz Shore, Gerald Kaufman and Ivan Yates came to dinner tonight and we discussed the idea of a 1964 Club to be based on the simple objective of doing to the Party what we know has to be done – modernise and overhaul and make it a vehicle for progressive action in our society. We would include in it only those who were young and also had some contribution of a positive kind to make – by virtue of their position in the Party. It’s a sort of colonels’ revolt, with no objects save that of revitalising the movement.

  We thought we might include in the Club: David Ennals, Peter Shore, Tony Howard, Ivan Yates, Gerald Kaufman, Shirley Williams, and Reg Prentice and Dick Marsh as trade union MPs.

  Saturday 28 November – Labour Party Conference, Blackpool

  Nye and Jennie came to dinner at our hotel with Shirley and Bernard Williams. Nye turned to me most viciously at the beginning, attacking the campaign, TV, and the idea of surveys of public opinion. He was really a bit touched, thought Bernard Williams, who sat opposite me. Unfortunately I am like a red rag to a bull to him. Perhaps he knows that I don’t trust him at all. Or is it because I am young and middle-class?

  Couldn’t sleep much tonight for nightmares about the National Executive election. I got elected to the Executive in bottom place – ousting Ian Mikardo. My vote had risen from 483,000 to 566,000 and Mikardo had dropped from 646,000 to 554,000. I am sorry it was Mik, and he said at lunch, ‘I’m glad it was you’, which was very sweet as he has lost the chairmanship, his seat, and this, all in two months.

  In the debate Shirley Williams made a brilliant speech and won universal applause. Nye’s speech this afternoon was witty, scintillating, positive, conciliatory – the model of what a leader should do. He didn’t knock Hugh out but he gently elbowed him aside.

  Monday 30 November

  Heard from Sir Winston Churchill, to whom I wrote for added support in my latest plea to Macmillan for a change in the law to permit me to get out of my peerage. He won’t write me a new letter but has given me permission to make further use of his earlier one written in 1953. Today is his eighty-fifth birthday. He certainly is a wonderful old boy.

  Saturday 19 December

  Dinner with Pam and Enoch Powell.

  The Powells relaxed a bit about politics and I learned that they really cannot bear Macmillan, which is interesting. There may be more discontent with him in the Party than is generally realised.

  Wednesday 20 January 1960

  We heard that Nye is critically ill and it looks as if he may not last.

  Thursday 21 January

  To the House of Commons to talk to the 1944 Association – a group of Labour businessmen. It’s also known as the queue for peerages. I gave them a talk on ‘The Future of the Labour Party’ and it really got a pretty frosty reception as they were all welcoming the spread of unit trusts. I’m afraid I didn’t go down very well.

  Saturday 23 January

  To Bristol where I spoke at the Republic Day celebrations run by the India Society. There were lots of Indians there and lovely dances performed by dance groups and singing Hindu songs. There must have been nearly a thousand altogether and it was certainly the most colourful and enjoyable do I have been to in Bristol for ages. Britain is far too inbred and what we need is some foreign influence to make us more interesting. American culture has detribalised us to some extent and we shall be better off still when we get the full blast from Russia and China.

  Thursday 18 February

  Had forty-five minutes’ talk with Hugh Gaitskell this evening in his room. He was very cordial and we discussed transport problems, for which I am Front Bench spokesman, broadcasting, and then finally Clause 4. This argument is raging in the Party at the moment as we approach the National Executive meeting on 16 March. Hugh asked me what I thought about it and I told him I was 100 per cent in favour of modernisation and additions but I had a strong feeling we should not delete the famous phrase about ‘common ownership of the means of prod
uction, etc’. He was a bit surprised. I explained that I thought the whole thing had been represented in a very negative way from Blackpool onwards. However, it was a perfectly cordial evening.

  Wednesday 16 March

  Left early for Transport House for the long-awaited meeting of the National Executive at which we are to rewrite Clause 4. Got there so early I had a chance to look in and see the folks at the flat round the corner. It’s so very nice to be able to get Dad’s advice with all his tremendous experience of political rows over sixty years. Caroline said, ‘Keep your mouth shut today.’ Dad said, ‘Don’t get involved.’ I think it is all very sound.

  Walking to Transport House I saw an enormous crowd of journalists and photographers. There were even ten or fifteen Trotskyites carrying placards announcing that they were from ‘The Clause 4 Defence Society’. The flashbulbs popped as I approached and it really was extremely funny to see – I couldn’t help laughing.

  We were in the tiny committee room on the fourth floor and as I arrived Bessie Braddock looked out of the window and claimed to have spotted a journalist on the roof so we pulled the curtains.

  There was some question raised about the leakages of Gaitskell’s draft, which had appeared in Tribune last week.

  Finally Gaitskell opened. I kept my notes written at the time in my book. He really went over the ground of his Blackpool speech again. In the subsequent discussion it was clear that nobody wanted a great row. The tone was extremely good and it was a very interesting debate. Walter Padley gave an impassioned defence of Clause 4 as it stands and Sam Watson reminded us of the two Irish labourers arguing about the ownership of a cow which was standing quietly in the corner being milked by a lawyer.

  It soon became dear that people were looking for some way of bridging the gap and Jennie Lee suggested that the words ‘commanding heights of the economy’ might provide such a bridge.

  Dick Crossman suggested we wanted an amplification and somebody said surely it was a clarification too. Finally Charlie Evans of the NUR said, ‘Why don’t we reaffirm it?’ So that’s how the three key words – reaffirms, clarifies and amplifies – came into Gaitskell’s draft. We accepted this by 22 votes to 1 with one abstention – Harry Nicholas of the TGWU on Frank Cousins’s orders. I said it was like saying that we ‘accept, reject and explain . . .’. We then paused for sandwiches before we went on to discuss the detailed amendments to Gaitskell’s draft. This went through fairly smoothly with some toughening up. I tried to get World Government specifically written in. It was defeated. But I did succeed in getting in explicit repudiation of colonialism with the words ‘rejecting the exploitation of one country by another’. This is in line with the Tunis Resolutions, and I felt was well worth while doing.

  The press were still pouring round the building as we left it, catching us with movie cameras as we walked away. But news of the compromise had reached them and we were able to be all smiles.

  Tuesday 29 March

  Went to drinks at Mervyn Stockwood’s – first time I have seen him since he was made Bishop of Southwark. He looked awfully pale and drawn. He doesn’t enjoy good health. Had a long talk with Stephen Spender before I realised who he was. Also met John Betjeman, whom I felt I knew well through TV. He is terribly funny and, with that inane toothy grin, he talked about ‘friends of friendless churches’, and spoke bitterly about this and that bishop or rural dean who had ordered the closure of some ‘lovely, Victorian, Gothic monstrosity’.

  Afterwards persuaded Tony Crosland to come and have a meal in a pub and back for a drink. He is the most complex character and it takes half a bottle of whisky and immense tact to penetrate his susceptibilities. We had bucketfuls of self-analysis but finally did have a reasonably intelligent discussion about rebuilding the Labour Party and what Hugh should do now. I felt it had done something to bridge the gulf between us over the last few years.

  Saturday 9 April

  At home all day and David Butler to tea. South African Prime Minister, Dr Verwoerd, shot. The South African crisis is deepening.

  Friday 6 May

  Up early and by taxi for Princess Margaret’s wedding. It was a glorious, hot summer day and we drove down Constitution Hill and past the Palace, down the Mall where the crowds had been sleeping all night and through the Admiralty Arch into Whitehall. The Guards in full dress and the general air of expectancy with all the decorations, and the streets empty of cars reminded me of the 1937 Coronation. We were terribly early and sat on the terrace of the Commons until we walked over to the Abbey.

  Every pillar in the Abbey had a closed-circuit TV screen and during the service we saw ourselves singing a hymn lustily. We also saw most of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and other visiting celebrities. Afterwards we had lunch at the Commons and I went off to Bristol to canvass in the local elections.

  Tuesday 10 May

  Met Jim Callaghan on the bus to the House of Commons. I think he has got his eye on the job of Shadow Foreign Minister. He let slip some remarks which made this very clear. The colonies are shrinking and he doesn’t want to shrink with them!

  Saturday 11 June

  The Party is in a deplorable state, Woodrow Wyatt’s speech attacking Frank Cousins as ‘the bully with the block vote’ has disheartened members.

  Afterwards drove to Oxford for the Nuffield dance. Jim Callaghan was there. Caroline has almost convinced me that he should be the new Deputy Leader.

  Wednesday 29 June

  Parliamentary Party meeting this morning to pass a vote of confidence in Gaitskell. The really important thing was the fact that all the trade unionists who spoke in support of the motion were strongly critical of Gaitskell and particularly attacked his assault on Clause 4 and ‘his little coterie of friends’. Manny Shinwell gave a tragic performance of senile egomania and Sydney Silverman really lost his grip. Finally we passed a vote of confidence in Hugh.

  This evening we debated changes in the homosexuality laws. Kenneth Robinson opened and I voted with the ninety-nine who wanted to legalise homosexuality over the age of twenty-one.

  Wednesday 6 July

  Nye Bevan died this afternoon.

  Tuesday 12 July

  This evening to the dance at the American embassy. There were 700 people there and we stayed until dawn was breaking. I haven’t danced all night since I was an undergraduate. It was without exception the most fabulous party I have ever attended.

  There were artificial trees with real fruit wired on to them. By using enormous plastic bags, four artificial swimming pools had been created in the garden which had been filled by the London Fire Brigade. Between and around them were gigantic candelabra wired for gas; from these tremendous candles burned continuous jets of flame.

  The guests were the establishment in toto. We danced round beside the Armstrong-Joneses and saw the Queen Mother and Bob Boothby gazing at each other rather balefully across the champagne bottles. R.A. Butler, Lord Salisbury, the editor of The Times, David Niven, several dukes, Alf Robens, Frank Soskice, Osbert Lancaster, Joyce Grenfell, the Gaitskells, etc. etc. Name them and they were there. We had no really close friends but knew an enormous number slightly. Though we enjoyed every minute of it, we felt a bit like the Roman senators must have felt the night before the Huns and the Goths arrived to sack Rome. Such splendid extravagance carries with it an inevitable taste of decadence.

  Wednesday 24 August – USSR trip

  Boat train from Liverpool Street to Harwich where we caught the Prinses Beatrix to the Hook of Holland. The Moscow coach was in the siding – heavy with polished mahogany, bright brass, thick curtains and plush stuffed decoration.

  Dinner in the wagons-lits as we passed through Utrecht and to bed as the train moved into West Germany. A Thermos, some Nestea, condensed milk in a toothpaste tube and saccharin provided that comfortable feeling of home as we headed for the Iron Curtain. We are the guests of the Inter-Parliamentary Group of the Supreme Soviet.

  Thursday 25 August

  Woken at 2.
30 am by East German police and dozed till 7 when the train went through shining, flashy, opulent West Berlin towards the East Sector.

  Tonight we went to bed in our clothes and at 11.30 the Polish police and soldiers called as we passed into the Soviet Union. At midnight two Red Army soldiers, a customs official, a girl from pest control, and an Intourist girl came in. Changed money at Brest and the wheels changed.

  Woke late and had breakfast of ham and eggs and tea in the Russian restaurant car.

  At 2 in Smolensk and rolling across western Russia all afternoon. At each level crossing stood a girl or woman holding a yellow flag in one hand and a silver or tin horn in the other. They were symbols of patient, loyal Russian people doing their duty and watching the great technology of Soviet power as it went on its way.

  At 8.50 met by Nicolai Kutchinsky, who is to accompany us and translate for us. We went to the Sovietskaya Hotel and then drove round Moscow up to the Lenin Hills and on the Metro. We are definitely getting VIP treatment and will get on well with Kutchinsky. Comment on Russian society by him: ‘I didn’t want TV but my mother-in-law and the kids did. There’s too much violence and shooting with all the revolutionary and wartime films.’

  Breakfast in our room and drove to see new housing development Big posters said ‘Eat More Cheese’.

  To Lenin’s office and apartment and then to the cathedral in the Kremlin, the Armoury Museum and the Palace of the Soviets. It was all very beautifully restored and well kept.

  Lunch at 4.30 at the hotel, by which time we were really knocked out. Kutchinsky is very anti-Molotov and we discussed the 20th Congress.

  To the Park of Rest and Culture to see Obratsov Puppet Theatre. Lots of English and Americans in the audience. Dinner 11.30-12.30 in hotel; big lumpen Mongolian delegation at next table. Band playing in 1930 style with young male singer singing ‘I Love Paris’. Discussed China, de-Stalinisation, Hungary and British colonialism. Kutchinsky is very agreeable and ready to talk frankly.

  Monday 29 August

  With Alexander Prosorovsky of the Planning Department to see a housing research project. Prefabrication is going ahead and we also heard about the operation of ‘Comradeship Courts’, which operate in blocks of flats and neighbourhoods to check bad behaviour by children, nagging wives, unfaithful husbands, etc. Sunday School has nothing to teach them!