by Benn, Tony
In 1971, the Benns were invited to China by the Chinese Ambassador. The visit took place at the tail end of the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ which began in 1966 and raged on in different stages until 1969. The Revolution was actively supported by Chairman Mao Tse Tung and it brought with it fundamental changes and involved a period of turbulence and violence between the old regime and the forces of radicalism, which rocked the country.
Mao’sfamous ‘big character’ poster BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS constituted official approval for the action of the young Red Guards who took over the universities, colleges, schools and factories and began a purge of the bureaucracy. The main objective of Mao and the Red Guards was to prevent the old functionaries from dominating the country, and to re-educate them by sending them into the countryside, in line with Mao’s teaching that theory and practice must go together.
This diary reflects the positive impressions of China and goes into considerable depth about life after the revolution, of which a glimpse is given here; it is a remarkable record of the aftermath of that extraordinary event.
Friday 10 September
We went by train from Kowloon to Lowu where we arrived at 10.26. There we got off the train, walked along the platform through the Hong Kong border post which didn’t look, to me, to be under any sort of strain or stress and we crossed the border into mainland China. It was a very remarkable feeling crossing from one world into the other towards the Red Flag, with the Chinese soldiers standing there in their drab khaki cotton uniforms.
There was a health check carried out on the platform, then passports and tickets were inspected and we went into the waiting room, where we were invited to help ourselves to the works of Chairman Mao in several languages.
While we waited, we saw children coming back from school waving their red flags, and the big black steam locomotives with red painted wheels glistening with oil.
There were inscriptions on the walls of the station in Chinese and English. One particularly, which read ‘The Japanese revolution will succeed if it follows Marxist/Leninist principles and pursues its own practice correctly’, was put there at the request of the China Friends of the Japanese Workers’ Delegation.
A Mr Sung, from the Institute of Foreign Affairs in Canton, arrived to take us to Canton. In the train he told us that Stalin had made mistakes but that today, the Soviet Union was, in effect, Fascist because it repressed criticism, Brezhnev was more cunning than Khrushchev. It was basically a revisionist regime. He stressed that the Chinese were only critical of the leadership and not of party members. He thought that even in Russia, they must be yearning for a Marxist/Leninist Party. He also said that 90 per cent of the world wants revolution and particularly Asia and Africa though circumstances in Western Europe and America were slightly different. He thought that Mao would be remembered mainly as a teacher, a poet and as a man of letters.
At 3, we arrived in Canton and were met by a member of the Institute of Foreign Relations. From 4.30 to 6.15 we drove around Canton, visiting the Yuesuh Park where we saw the old Krupps guns which had been used against the British in the Opium Wars. Over a stadium was the statement: ‘Be vigilant – defend the motherland. Be prepared for war and other calamities.’
At the People’s Hotel we met Mr Sun, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Hotel. He told us that the Revolutionary Committees were made up of members of the People’s Liberation Army, the cadres and the mass of the workers. They had ten hours’ study of Mao Tse Tung each week and three monthly self-criticism meetings. The hotel’s Revolutionary Committee had removed the feudal decorations from the hotel; they had decided to admit workers and peasants, which the hotel had not done before; and they had ‘put politics in command’. The Revolutionary Committee was selected by continuous consultation.
We had dinner with Mr Chen Yu, aged sixty-nine, the Vice-Chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Canton. He said that by coming we had contributed to understanding. When I asked him what his greatest problem was, he said that it was to learn to use the thoughts of Mao Tse Tung, that the masses were right and that science must serve the people. The Chinese intended to expand agriculture first, light industry second and heavy industry third, and then electronics. As we later learned, electronics had become somewhat controversial at the time of Liu Shai Chi and the idea that electronics could solve everything had been rejected by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. I asked one or two questions about China: whether the tactics of co-operation with the Kuomintang in the past might be used again to bring Taiwan back to mainland China and whether Mao could ever be wrong. I was told that he could not be because what he said came from the masses.
Saturday 11 September
At 9.30 we went to the 7th Middle School in Canton. Before the Cultural Revolution the school had been run according to the bourgeois intellectual views copied from the old world but in the Cultural Revolution teachers and pupils had rebelled against this old line and had put ‘politics in command’. We were told that the students were sent to factories and communes and railway workshops and had much to learn from the noble characteristics of workers.
The school had rejected the idea of marks and knowledge as a basis of selectivity.
The curriculum comprised politics, literature, maths, history, geography, revolutionary art, physics and chemistry. We were told that the main authors were Mao Tse Tung and Lin Piao, from whose work all literature was taught, and they also studied articles written by workers and peasants who had been learning Marxist and Leninist thought. They also studied military training and students went with the army units to learn how to fire guns.
An old teacher said that he preferred the new educational line and that in the old society, education had simply been taught to help pupils on step-by-step to university, to look for personal fame and glory, to put technology first. The exams were designed to catch the students out and really involved treating them like animals. Students didn’t see their work as part of the general political development of society. But now they hoped they were more integrated with the masses. The leadership of the school was now under the firm control of the working classes and it was always asking, ‘Whom do we serve?’ Before, only 30 per cent of the places had been occupied by workers and peasants.
After lunch at 2.30, we went to the Canton school for deaf mutes. This had been opened in 1946 as a private, fee-paying school where there were forty students, and they were taught finger language. Now the school has been expanded and is based upon acupuncture. Nobody had cared much about deaf mutes, but in 1968 the People’s Liberation Army medical team had come, having learned acupuncture and having first experimented on themselves, and began to deal with the problems of the deaf mute.
At the beginning of the treatment many of the children were able to hear but not to speak. But after three or six months’ treatment some began to regain their power of speech quite quickly. The treatment consisted of starting and stopping the acupuncture over a period of six months. They had secured about an 80 per cent success rate in speech and within that a fairly high success rate with hearing.
Back to our guest house and had supper alone. Then to the huge airport and boarded the plane, an Ilyushin, which took us to Peking in three and a half hours.
Wednesday 13 October
Caroline’s birthday.
I sent my Chairman’s message to Labour Weekly, the new Party paper, in which I began spelling out the extension of Party democracy. We had the Shadow Cabinet meeting at 4 – the first meeting after Conference on the Common Market. The Chief Whip reported on the business of the House, telling us that the European Communities Bill would begin to be debated on 21 October. Harold moved that the PLP did not support entry into the Common Market on the present terms.
George Thomson then moved to enter the Common Market, after taking account of the resolution at the Conference. Shirley Williams supported. Jim Callaghan said if we flouted the Conference, we would immolate the Party and thoroug
hly upset the constituencies, which would have consequences for the Shadow Cabinet elections. Harold Wilson summed up against George Thomson’s motion and it was agreed that the Parliamentary Party will be recommended by the Shadow Cabinet to oppose the Tory Government’s proposal to enter the EEC.
Monday 18 October
We had the Shadow Cabinet at which we resumed the discussion on the Common Market. Roy put forward a resolution that we should have a free vote. Immediately after the meeting we heard that the Tories were going to be given a free vote – Heath had announced it himself. This was an absolute bombshell and so at 2.15 the Shadow Cabinet was called again. Harold said, ‘If Heath gives a free vote, we shall have to have a free vote.’
I lost my temper with Harold, and I said, ‘I don’t know what game you are playing but we cannot have a free vote when the Party has decided its view.’ I said, ‘The line we take is that there must be a free vote of the British public. This is the right thing to happen, not a free vote of the House of Commons, which excludes the public from any right of choice.’ The position was more or less held after that.
I was beginning to have second thoughts then about whether I would stand for the deputy leadership.
Tuesday 19 October
We had a Shadow Cabinet in the evening and Harold tried a new form of words. He said, ‘This House, recalling the words of the Prime Minister in the General Election that no British government could possibly take this country into the Common Market against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the British public, calls on the Government to submit to the democratic judgment of a General Election.’
Bob Mellish intervened to say, ‘Look, Harold, it’s all over. Leave it.’
Denis said, ‘Leave it.’
Then Shirley tried to raise the question of the free vote and the argument started all over again.
By the end, the whole Shadow Cabinet was in a state of uproar and we were all set for a straight clash.
I had dinner with Eric Heffer, then phoned Judith, Joan Lestor, and Peter Shore to see how we could contain what had emerged, namely a European Social Democrat wing in the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers which was a minority but intended to defy the Conference decision. I stayed talking until 1 am and the atmosphere was tight. When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was finally convinced that this was a deep split.
Thursday 28 October
The party is now on the eve of the great split when voting takes place and is absolutely dreading the situation. One of the factors that has made it a great deal worse is that Douglas Houghton, the Chairman of the PLP, has announced that he intends to vote for entry and this, of course, makes the revolt against the Whip respectable.
I received a letter from Enoch Powell – now that was a surprise – congratulating me on my Common Market speech yesterday, 90 per cent of which he had agreed with.
Harold opened the last day’s debate on the Common Market and he hedged so cleverly that it was clear that if a Labour government was elected when he was Prime Minister, he would simply accept the Common Market. We had the vote and 69 Labour MPs voted for the Market, giving Heath a majority of 112. It was terribly tense and there had been rumours of people fighting after the vote; in fact, they were just shouting at Roy Jenkins as he went through the Lobby. It was awful.
Wednesday 15 December
The Jordanian Ambassador was machine-gunned near Holland Park School about three minutes before Melissa and all her friends were going down to get their fish and chips in the lunch hour.
Friday 31 December
Played pingpong and went out with the boys in the evening. Got home just as midnight struck and 1971 came to an end. It was the first full year of Opposition. As Trade and Industry spokesman I played a leading part in the big debates on Rolls Royce and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, and the Government’s industrial policy, which was very much the ‘lame duck’ policy. I was under heavy attack from the Tories: they wanted to make me the scapegoat for the failures at Rolls Royce and UCS and, although I fought back hard in the debates and won some support, undoubtedly the Tories and the Government did succeed in associating me with failure. In supporting UCS I came up against another group of people, namely the right wing of the Labour Party, which is opposed to my support of shop stewards, many of whom are Communists.
I got drawn closely into the Common Market argument and I spoke out frankly. My position on this was slightly ambivalent because I wasn’t hostile to the Common Market, indeed I made speeches broadly in support of it as a Minister, but I did think there should have been a referendum and this was a difficult argument to get across. I certainly learned one thing – that the British public just isn’t in favour of participation. It is told by its liberal élites that it shouldn’t be interested in these things, and I am not sure how easy it will be to get people to accept participation at the moment. This intervention in the Common Market argument certainly cost me some support. I can’t visualise myself having taken any other line because this is what I believed in, but it was a difficult period.
At the end of 1970 Frank McElhone had come to see me and had said that in his opinion I would be the next Leader of the Labour Party. For the first time I had a strong campaigner working for me. Frank McElhone is a very able political organiser, and without him I might have done much worse. But I think when it came to it, it would have been better if I hadn’t stood for the deputy leadership; or, having stood, not to have spoken so frankly, been a bit more cautious. But that is contrary to my own instincts.
At the end of the year the bitter press attacks on me for standing had done me a lot of damage, there is no question about that, and they had affected my self-confidence. I felt I had had something of the stuffing knocked out of me.
I never remember politics being quite as unpleasant as this before; but maybe this is what life is like at the top.
I very much want to improve relations with the trade unions, where I think there has been deep damage done by the Common Market split, although the Government is so unpopular that the Party and the country don’t want to see a split. We have got to handle this with great care.
The Party is in a bad way. I think the sourness left by the Common Market business, which is not by any means over yet, will remain for some time. I don’t think Harold Wilson will ever be Prime Minister again, although I could be wrong. I have to improve my relations with the Labour MPs and with the Shadow Cabinet, and be a success as Party Chairman which is not going to be easy this year.
Friday 28 January 1972
Drove to Bristol on the M4 for the first time today. It took me two hours from home to the centre of Bristol. I must say it is a beautiful road and I began to feel that the whole geography of England had been altered by it.
Monday 31 January
There was a statement on the Bogside massacre yesterday in which thirteen Catholics were killed by troops, following the illegal march which had been undertaken by the Civil Rights people against a ban. I think it is the largest number of people killed in the United Kingdom by British troops for 200 years or more. Bernadette Devlin was not called by the Speaker so she had to speak on points of order. At one point, she stamped down the gangway and went over and attacked the Home Secretary, Maudling, physically, an extraordinary sight. She smacked him and pulled his hair. People took her away and she was fighting with them. Poor old Hugh Delargy, Labour MP for Thurrock, is very shaky and sick, and being a devoted Irish Catholic he looked as though he would have an apoplectic fit and there would be a fight on the floor of the House. At any rate, she did withdraw. The Speaker, very wisely, didn’t do anything about it.
Saturday 12 February
Tom Holliday drove me over to the Northumberland miners’ meeting in the City Hall where Joe Gormley and I both had a tremendous reception. It was a very curious occasion because this huge hall was filled with working miners in their working clothes
and the general impression was one of greyness and no colour, because of the dark browns and blacks and greys of their clothes, but they were in terrific heart even though beginning to experience some hardship themselves as a result of the strike.
The power cuts are now widespread and on alternate days we lose power for about three hours so that the whole economy is beginning to feel the effects of the strike. One aspect of this is that it set into being a tremendous emergency system of help for old people which had not existed before. I discovered that in my own constituency in Bristol, about 80 per cent of the streets are now covered by street wardens and street committees brought into being by the strike. The other remarkable thing about the strike is the extent to which the wives of the miners have supported their men and the extent to which the public – although gravely inconvenienced – are in sympathy with the miners.
Monday 14 February
To Transport House this morning, where we had a special meeting of the NEC on the miners’ strike. Judith Hart spoke first and said we must support the miners without equivocation and she asked whether we should demand the resignation of the Government. She also thought it necessary to say something about the old and the sick and the need for local authorities and Labour Parties to help.
Joe Gormley pointed out they could have forced a general strike, but if they had had one, Heath would have gone to the country. ‘We have never argued’, said Joe Gormley, ‘that we were a special case and we want a return to normality as soon as possible.
At the end of the meeting the resolution which I had drafted in support was accepted.
Tuesday 15 February
We had miners’ meetings in the House this afternoon. A mass lobby took place. People were very critical of the previous Labour Government which, they felt, had let them down and I think that they were right. Looking back on it, I think our policy towards the mining industry was very shortsighted: stimulating nuclear power before we were really ready and running down the mines.
