by Benn, Tony
I said, ‘Are the Americans closing theirs?’ He said he didn’t know and I said that this would be the thing that would interest me.
George then called over Dick Crossman and said, ‘Did you know this?’ Dick said yes, and George blew up.
After the division, George gathered Tony Crosland, Dick Marsh, Michael Stewart, George Thomson and others in his room. What had happened was that Harold had been at a meeting all evening and had gone to the Palace for a Privy Council to get this Proclamation out to close the gold market, and George had not been told. While we were all sitting there, George picked up the phone and got through to Harold and exploded. He shouted at Harold and said it was intolerable and there were a lot of discontented Ministers. All we could hear at our end was George saying, ‘Will you let me speak, Christ, Christ, will – you – let – me – speak. Now look, look, will you let me speak,’ and so on. Then we heard George say, ‘Now, don’t say that: don’t say in my condition. That may have been true some other nights, but not tonight. Don’t say in my condition.’ It was obvious Harold was saying he had tried to contact him but that George was drunk. I don’t know whether or not he was drunk, because you can’t always tell.
George continued to shout at him and Harold must have asked, ‘Who’s over there?’ George told him and Harold said he had no right to call an irregular meeting of Cabinet Ministers, a cabal, and so on.
Finally Michael Stewart took the phone and said, ‘Now, look, Harold, you must understand we are worried and we have just heard this. We really think we ought to have a meeting.’ Harold than apparently said, ‘Come to Number 10,’ because Michael asked, ‘Don’t you think it would be wiser if you came over here?’ George picked up another phone and said, ‘Send my car and my detective to bring the Prime Minister to the House of Commons,’ which didn’t help.
There was another division and I went on to the Front Bench, told Fred Peart to be available and told Dick Crossman, who said he was busy and anyway he knew all about it Barbara Castle was tied up in the all-night session on the Transport Bill. Finally, at 1.30 am, I went over to Number 10 with George Thomson. By this time Ray Gunter and all the other Ministers I have mentioned had been gathered, as had Peter Shore, who had been to the Privy Council at the Palace.
George shouted and Harold insisted he had tried to phone him and George said, ‘I don’t believe it.’
Harold said, ‘I tried for an hour and a quarter.’
‘I do not believe it.’
Harold got rattled and rather irritated and said, ‘I am not going to be called a liar.’
George repeated that he didn’t believe it and then demanded that Harold’s Private Secretary, Michael Palliser, tell him how long the Prime Minister had tried to contact him. Michael Palliser, of course, wouldn’t answer and frankly, I don’t know whether Harold had tried or not. Maybe Harold did think George was drunk; he was certainly behaving as though he were. In the end George stood up and shrieked and bellowed and shouted abuse as he went round the table, then left the room.
Apparently, President Johnson had been closeted with his advisers all day, and in the course of the afternoon there had been a message from the Americans asking us to dose the London gold market. We agreed as long as we were able to present the situation as done at the request of the Americans. I think we probably lost £150–200 million in reserves today and Harold thought if we hadn’t closed, we would have lost £4–500 million. We are on the eve of the other devaluation that Cecil King predicted.
Harold and Roy had been going over this all evening, with meetings starting at 6, until finally at 11 they had all gone off to the Palace for the Privy Council and the order had been made. Tony Crosland and Michael Stewart were very niggled about not having been consulted. I said I didn’t think a post-mortem would help and I wanted to know whether there would be a statement or not.
Then Dick Crossman came on the phone and said the news was all round the House and there would have to be a statement. At 2.15, Robert Armstrong, Roy’s Private Secretary, began dictating a statement, which came at about 2.45 am. We went on arguing and arguing. By this time the press had gathered around Number 10 with flashing cameras.
Harold said that George would have to apologise or go. Peter said, ‘Now, calm down. You did very well until you lost your temper with George. Just calm down.’ Harold was very overstrained.
Roy’s behaviour was very detached and strong and rather impressive. He’s got his eye on the main chance and thinks Harold will destroy himself and that he, Roy, will then take over.
Afterwards Peter and I walked back to the House together. I talked to people; Judith Hart and I made a list of Ministers we thought would stick by Harold in a crisis.
George, meanwhile having stomped out of Number 10, sat ostentatiously on the backbenches and said he was now a backbencher. Of course, everyone left in the Chamber, including the Tories and the lobby, could see this and there he was shouting at everybody that he’d resigned. He behaved so disgracefully that under no circumstances should Harold take him back as Foreign Secretary. But I expect that in the morning Harold will think, ‘Oh well, if George goes, there will be trouble on the backbenches,’ and that’ll be an end to it.
I talked to Ron Brown just before leaving, he said George was convinced that Harold had lied to him. George had checked all the switchboards to find out if any messages had been left for him and claimed that there had been none. So he was bitter as hell.
At 6 am I came home. I gave Tony Crosland a lift and he hotly denied that there was any alliance to replace Harold. He and Roy were at daggers drawn and there were great disagreements. But I’m sure Tony, in his heart, thinks that Harold will go. Tony took an optimistic view of our economic situation and didn’t take too grim a view even of the gold panic. But with the Bank Holiday, the Cabinet split, gold suspended, and the pound in the front line to the dollar, I should have thought the possibility of the crisis which we predicted a month ago is very real.
When I got home I began dictating my diary. It’s now 8 am on Friday 15, and I’m due back in the office at 9. But I must keep my diary up to date because if the Labour Government falls, as I now think quite possible, then at any rate I shall have documented the circumstances.
Friday 15 March
Just before I went to bed I heard that George Brown had resigned and that Michael Stewart had been put in his place. So that is the end of George Brown’s tenure at the Foreign Office. It began with a threatened resignation because we didn’t devalue and ended with a real resignation arising out of the consequences of devaluation. What George will do now is anyone’s guess. He is a person of extraordinary intellect, courage and ability, but his instability is such that it is impossible to have him in a government. I wonder how capable he is of causing trouble from the backbenches. His resignation now as Foreign Secretary also raises the question of his deputy leadership of the Party. It is a major political tragedy.
Thursday 21 March
In the evening Caroline and I went up to Tommy Balogh’s party. I had a long talk to Mary Wilson, who is very miserable, believing that if anything went right with the Government in the future, Roy would get the credit and Harold would get the blame. I think she may be right as far as the press is concerned. But there’s no harm in bolstering her up and I tried to.
Wednesday 3 April
My forty-third birthday and the children came in with their presents in the morning, which was very sweet of them. But it was an awful day for a birthday because I had to go in very early and I was extremely tired, having been to bed so late.
Immediately after lunch Harold came down to my room and we talked for an hour. I pressed my claim for the leadership of the House if there was a reshuffle but he wanted someone who was a bit more genial and jovial and less worried-looking than me, someone with a trade union background who would drink in the bar all the time and be jolly. This was a requirement. So he’s going to appoint Fred Peart.
Then he asked me, ‘Were you
serious about wanting Education?’ (I had told Marcia this when rumours of a reshuffle were rife.)
‘Yes, providing I could have an Education Act and make the comprehensive-schools thing a really living issue.’
He said he was thinking of Ted Short for it and that Denis Healey had wanted it. He went on to talk about his Inner Cabinet and I said I certainly didn’t expect to be excluded for the rest of this Parliament. He had said that this Cabinet would be the first real ‘Wilson Cabinet’, that would last right through to the next Election. This of course is all bunk. I told him I didn’t much fancy being outside the ‘real’ Cabinet and I raised the question of Peter – he is keen to move Peter from the DEA. I said I thought this would be disastrous; after all the attacks on Peter it would be quite wrong to move him. But Harold replied that Barbara had wanted to take over the DEA and Ray won’t move from Labour.
He calmed me down and the Education thing was left as a possibility.
Monday 8 April
The National Executive Home Policy Committee gathered to consider a huge wodge of papers. George Brown arrived late and rolling drunk, and Alice Bacon, who had taken the chair, handed it over to George. He behaved outrageously and it was impossible to make any progress. Everybody was very courteous about it but the fact is he’s a damned nuisance and I don’t see any future in politics for him. I always knew that he would either get a new lease of life after his resignation or break up. I think he’s breaking up.
Saturday 13 April
All day doing my constituency letters. Caroline worked in the British Museum. In the evening we went to the new Wimpy Bar at Notting Hill Gate and then watched television.
Monday 15 April
Caroline went to Trafalgar Square for the Aldermaston rally.
Sunday 21 April
Lazy start. It was a lovely day and Caroline sat in the garden. I mowed the grass and scrubbed the basement floor.
The news today is dominated by Enoch Powell’s speech in which he raised the racial issue by saying that he thought this country had gone mad to admit so many immigrants and that it was like adding a match to a pile of gunpowder. Enoch is of working-class origins; he got a scholarship to a grammar school, did very well academically, became a professor at twenty-four and a brigadier at twenty-nine. But he has never been accepted in the Tory Party. He wasn’t offered a job, for example, in the City after he left the Treasury with Peter Thorneycroft, and this obviously burned very much into his mind. He has got to have somebody to look down on and this is the way he does it.
Monday 22 April
Enoch Powell was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet this morning by Heath in a great and rather well publicised effort to reassert his leadership.
Wednesday 24 April
The press is still full of the repercussions of Enoch Powell’s speech just before the weekend. Yesterday 200 dockers came to the House of Commons and shouted obscene things at Labour MPs and called Ian Mikardo a ‘bloody Chinese Jew’. He recognised some of the East End Fascist leaders among these guys. The white trash have picked this speech up. It has suddenly liberated them and there are strikes all over the place in support of Enoch Powell. He really has opened Pandora’s Box. I should think Enoch Powell will get an enormous vote in his constituency, but from the Government’s point of view the situation could be very dangerous and difficult.
Thursday 9 May
To the ITV studios at 11 for the discussion on the local government elections today. As I arrived at the studios one of Harold’s staff was waiting for me and found a telephone and put me through to Number 10. Harold told me that Cecil King was coming out tomorrow with a tremendous attack on him in the Daily Mirror and he wanted to see me to build up the second stage of the campaign against King. But when I went into the studio the interviewer actually had the text of the article, entitled ‘Enough is Enough’, saying that Harold was no good and he should go. It said that Britain faced the worst financial crisis in its history and that lies about the reserves would be no answer. Quintin Hogg and Eric Lubbock and I were on and this was really all we discussed. I said that Cecil King was entitled to whatever view he liked about the leader of a political party, but it was a grave dereliction of duty to throw doubt upon our financial position in that way. Then Eric Lubbock commented that the attack was just because Cecil King hadn’t got a job under Wilson, which was a bit cynical. I said that it wasn’t surprising, that it was known he had been saying this privately for some time and all that was interesting was that it had come out. Then Quintin got terribly excited in the middle of the discussion and said, ‘Get out, get out, get out. Everybody despises your government: get out, we don’t want you any more.’
I just turned to him and said, ‘Down, Quintin, down,’ as if he were a great dog, which was the best I could do.
Saturday 11 May
I went to see Harold this morning. He was in his sitting room looking, I thought, awfully defeated and quiet. He said, ‘I’m not quitting, you know,’ as if I might have any doubts about it. I daresay he just suspects everybody, including me, and in the end he may just be left with Gerald Kaufman and Peter. I told him what I thought but he was absolutely opposed to saying anything to the Party. He was going to appear on television and talk to James Margach and release his speech to the PLP Trade Union Group of MP’s next Monday. But he was not going to speak to the Party because he said he didn’t comment on local government election results. I tried to persuade him that, as Party Leader, people wanted to hear from him. But it was no good; he wouldn’t do it and so I decided to do it myself.
Thursday 16 May
Cabinet, and one of the first items that came up was votes at eighteen. Dick Crossman recommended that we should more or less have to accept votes at eighteen in view of our decision to give normal civil rights at eighteen. He made a play of regretting it but he was actually pleased.
Dick Marsh attacked it violently and said he thought we must have gone absolutely mad if we thought the working class wanted students to be enfranchised. When I was called, I said all that did was to make me wish they had raised the minimum age for entry into the Cabinet to forty-three, which would leave Dick out and put me in. But this was important and we had to accept it.
Peter Shore made a very good speech in favour and Gerald Gardiner was in favour. But there was great anxiety on the part of Willie Ross, the Scottish Secretary, and also George Thomas, the Welsh Secretary, for reasons of nationalism, and it may well be that this will bust us up.
Monday 3 June – Trip to Rumania
Flew to Bucharest, where we were met by dignitaries led by Alexandru Birladeanu, Chairman of the Science Research Committee, and by the Ambassador, Sir John Chadwick, and Embassy staff.
Dinner with the Ambassador and my staff (Ieuan Maddock, Harry Slater and Barry Smith). The Embassy staff were typical of a British embassy beleaguered in a Communist country, still fighting the Cold War hard. They made the point that Rumanians had never enjoyed any political freedom at any time in their history, that they had been under the Turks, under the Kings and under Antonescu, and they had not lost a great deal by having a Communist regime, although it was a rigid domestic regime which had not even been told about the position in Czechoslovakia. It was generally thought they were not wildly interested in Britain but did think that they had something to gain by establishing a partnership with us.
Tuesday 4 June
At 9 I was driven to the Council of Ministers for the first meeting with Verdet, the First Deputy Prime Minister. Around him at the table were a range of government people.
After the exchange of courtesies and inevitable television coverage of the opening session, we sat down and discussed practical issues. Our talks on computers developed into a general discussion about the COCOM embargo and we said that it was in the British national interest to develop as much independence as we could from the United States in the technical field. This point I had to hammer home again and again.
We finished at about 11.30 and at
lunch I heard the news of Senator Robert Kennedy’s shooting and it is depressing to think of the violence which makes democratic politics increasingly difficult Not that the Americans are any different from the Europeans or indeed any other country, but it is more of a shock to discover that this can happen there in such a repetitive way.
At 4.30 I went back to the Council of Ministers for the first proper talk with Birladeanu who was accompanied by a number of others on the science side. When I commented that science was defined in Russia as ‘satisfying your curiosity at the expense of the state’, Birladeanu said that in Rumania it was said that if you want to spend money you could gamble, if you want to spend it enjoyably, you could spend it on women, but if you want to waste money, you have to go for science.
The Rumanians are pretty tough negotiators and this, I think, is one of their strengths. They are using their customer power in a way that we don’t always do in Britain.
At 8 we went and had dinner at the Pascaras Restaurant overlooking a lake. It was a beautiful wooden structure with an orchestra playing on the ground floor and a tremendous gathering of people. Dragos, my interpreter, was there; he had guided me through all these discussions. We had a most enjoyable time.
Birladeanu had been in Russia in 1940. He knew Stalin, who he said was a highly intelligent man but had ruled Russia with oriental tyranny. He said Stalinism had paralysed economic science for thirty years and had prevented new thinking from developing. Birladeanu himself had been criticised in 1940 for saying that the factors of production were themselves a commodity.
He said he expected to see a two-party state developing in Rumania later and that no one had yet solved the problem of democratic political freedom in a socialist state. These were the things that interested him.
We sat down with everyone telling jokes and the dinner was just one long laugh. The first joke was about Khrushchev, who won the Nobel Prize for Science because he planted seed in Russia and got the wheat from Canada.
