The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  Thursday 23 May

  The amusing news tonight is that Harold has made Marcia Williams a peer.

  Monday 3 June

  I went to speak at Eastbourne to the National Union of Sheet Metalworkers, a very old union. My speech, which had been very carefully prepared, went down like a pancake on a wet pavement. No real response. Afterwards we sat round and talked about it to some of the men. They said, ‘Workers are suspicious. They don’t believe what’s happening. They think all this involvement is a substitute for real power, and they know that they have real power, if they want to use it. They want socialism’, and so on.

  I think many unions are in a sense saying, ‘We want the whole thing or we shall just use our veto because we can deal with management at any time we like so long as government keeps out of the way.’

  Tuesday 4 June

  There was an amusing incident today. The visiting Bulgarian Minister of Trade had given me as a parting gift a tablecloth and a little Bulgarian calculating machine, a tiny hand-held one in beautiful yellow, which had a memory. It was a lovely thing. The department that advises on gifts said I could keep the tablecloth but that the calculator was too valuable and it should be for office use only. I asked today what had happened to it and was told it had been sent away to be debugged in case it had a recording device in it, and when the technicians had looked at it closely, they had been enormously impressed by the quality of its circuitry, which they said was the best they had seen among American, German and Japanese examples. They were very puzzled by how the Bulgarians could have got hold of such marvellous technology. So it could be that Britain is reduced to copying the Bulgarians, though if that happens we really are finished!

  A group of Scottish Labour MPs – Hugh Brown, Tam Dalyell, George Lawson, John White, Harry Ewing and John Robertson – came to see me at the House about the workers’ newspaper co-operative in Glasgow. They were absolutely persuaded that the workers were serious people who ought to be supported. The most amazing thing of all was that George Lawson, who is a dour, tough, right wing, pro-Market MP and a stern critic of mine, said he believed the workers’ co-operative was something that reflected the best in my ideas and he felt it was something we should support. It was like getting a kiss and a hug in public from Royjenkins. It did indicate that there has been a shift of opinion. I told them to go and canvass other Ministers and I would do my best.

  Tuesday 11 June

  There were three items on the agenda at the Public Enterprise Committee of Cabinet, first being the Meriden crisis. Joel Barnett and Harold Lever recommended that in view of what Geoffrey Robinson and Dennis Poore had said to them, the whole thing should be dropped. I fought like a tiger – I have never fought harder than I did there. To my amazement I got away with it. I have lost all respect for Harold Lever and Barnett too, the way they have handled this. If I had accepted their recommendation, there would have been endless trouble.

  On IPD, I said I was very reluctant, but I felt you could not sack 1,200 people even though it was a bum firm. So it was agreed that the firm should go bust, that we should tell the Receiver we intend to buy the factory and set up a company for it, have a feasibility study and save the jobs as best we could. A sort of legalised work-in. That was not a bad conclusion.

  I dashed over to the husbands-and-wives’ dinner, with Barbara and Ted, John Silkin and Rosamund, Peter and Liz and Tony and Judith. I told them I have now declassified my Home Policy Committee document, and it will be available at the PLP for them to see tomorrow. I added that I was under heavy pressure and I wanted a bit of support.

  Barbara turned on me. ‘You with your open government, with your facile speeches, getting all the publicity, pre-empting resources – “I’m the big spender, I can’t do it without money” – trying to be holier than thou and more left wing than me.’ She was extremely angry with me. ‘I know we can only get this expenditure if we go for a statutory wages policy,’ she said, revealing once again her hatred for the trade unions.

  I said, ‘Look, Barbara, I haven’t spent a penny, you’ve had pensions, the nurses’ increase. I haven’t been allowed to spend a penny. I’m thinking about future policy, and the only job I’ve been given is to sack 21,000 people in my own constituency working on Concorde. I have never said anything about pre-empting resources because I know that has got to be done collectively, but I am simply developing a case.’

  But she retorted, ‘How are we going to solve the problems?’

  ‘We’re going to solve them by trading off wealth for power,’ I replied. ‘We have got to admit it is an unfair society, and give people a perspective, and I am not prepared to accept that Britain is declining.’ My God, Barbara’s hatred really came out. I think she is feeling guilty.

  Friday 14 June

  There was a message from Number 10 that the Prime Minister has said I am not to make any more speeches on industrial policy until he has had the chance of a word with me, with no date fixed for that. So I said to Roy Williams, ‘I shall take no notice of that whatsoever.’ You can’t tell a Secretary of State not to make speeches.

  Then I had a candid talk to Roy. ‘Look. This is what is really happening. All my industrial and regional policy in respect of Europe is being taken away and put under the Foreign Secretary’s control. My Green Paper is being blocked by the Treasury, by the Chancellor’s minute. My day-to-day business is now being watched by Harold Lever and Joel Barnett. All my speeches are controlled, and indeed I have been told by the Prime Minister not to speak or broadcast. And as regards appointments, the Prime Minister has said I am not to proceed even by letting it be known there are vacancies. This is the position I am in and do you wonder that, frustrated within Whitehall, I turn outside, where my support is?’

  Roy Williams, who is a shrewd chap, said, ‘Well, you know, Secretary of State, having seen you at Blackpool at that POEU conference, I do realise what fantastic support there is and what a strength it must be.’

  ‘Honestly, Roy, it is not that I want a boost, but that is where the support is and whether I am a Minister or not is of marginal interest to me because all of that will continue after I leave office. I will just have to run this as best I can. You mustn’t worry and if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll discontinue press releases and do street interviews instead.’

  Tuesday 18 June

  Went to London Airport and caught the plane to Brussels with members of my Private Office. We were met and taken straight to the Commission for a series of meetings.

  This huge Commission building in Brussels, in the shape of a cross, is absolutely un-British. I felt as if I was going as a slave to Rome; the whole relationship was wrong. Here was I, an elected man who could be removed, doing a job, and here were these people with more power than I had and no accountability to anybody.

  My visit confirmed in a practical way all my suspicions that this would be the decapitation of British democracy without any countervailing advantage, and the British people, quite rightly, wouldn’t accept it. There is no real benefit for Britain. Though depressing and gloomy, I found it a most fascinating day.

  Friday 21 June

  We were defeated yesterday by 21 votes in a motion of censure against our industrial strategy, moved by Heath. But at least it forced Harold to defend the manifesto in Parliament. The papers of course were full of it.

  Monday 21 June

  To lunch with Jack Jones at Locket’s. It was an interesting lunch because he was trying, as usual, to bully me. He began by saying, ‘Harold Lever says Meriden isn’t viable. They just want £7 million of public money. I am going to see him again in a couple of days.’

  ‘Well, Harold Lever doesn’t want this to work.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll have to see him about it,’ Jack replied, making it quite clear that he is now bypassing me and going straight to Harold Lever.

  We moved on to the general issue of companies that are going bust. ‘Nationalisation is no good,’ he said. ‘People don’t want it. Management in
nationalised industries is very bad.’

  ‘I haven’t much faith in British management, but it’s certainly no worse in the nationalised industries than in private industry.’

  ‘But people don’t want nationalisation.’

  ‘Well, we may have no alternative if firms go bust.’

  ‘What do you mean, “if firms go bust”?’

  I gave him some examples – Fisher-Bendix, Beaverbrook’s Scottish Daily Express.

  ‘You don’t want to support the Scottish newspaper workers,’ he snapped.

  I said, ‘It’s a very big political issue in Scotland whether they are entitled to have a newspaper of their own.’

  ‘You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to save every lame duck.’

  ‘What about British Leyland?’ I asked.

  ‘Why couldn’t you sell it?’

  I said, ‘To whom?’

  ‘Why don’t you sell it to General Motors?’

  When Jack Jones recommends that the British Government sell British Leyland to General Motors of America, there is an indication that the criticisms of him from the Left are correct. He was reinforcing everything Denis Healey says.

  We moved on to the Common Market and I told him my view of the true position. He said, ‘I have spoken to Harold and he says that the Common Market will never accept our proposals and that we will be out in six months.’

  ‘You must be joking,’ I said, ‘Jim made one speech for domestic consumption and now he is in the process of selling out to the Market.’

  Thursday 27 June

  Antony Part came to see me at 4.10. He came on to my speech due to be made tomorrow at Buxton on regional policy. ‘How did you get to see that?’ I asked.

  ‘The office here asked me to check the figures and they sent me a copy.’

  I said, ‘It’s a political speech that’s being made and the press release is going out through Transport House.’

  ‘Well, Minister, don’t you think that what you’re doing is inflaming the North against the South?’ That was a reference to the phrase ‘industrial policies being discussed in the comfortable atmosphere of Westminster, Whitehall and Fleet Street’ and to the fact that I describe other parts of the country, perhaps patronisingly, as the regions.

  Well, I pointed to the map on the wall showing the assisted areas and I said, ‘That’s the most important map in Britain – that’s where our support lies.’

  ‘Well, you’re inflaming people,’ he said. ‘You’re raising temperatures.’

  I said, ‘Not at all – I’m using very clear language.’ I went over and opened the manifesto. ‘The first objective of the manifesto is about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families,’ I read.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have never known a Minister in the whole course of my life in any party who has been like you.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry but as far as I am concerned my work as a manager or a Minister is nothing like as important as my work as an educator and spokesman – speaking for people.’ Of course, Antony Part simply didn’t understand that. He has a completely different way of thinking and just does not seem to be really trying to assist me in getting things done. He just comes along and warns me: that I’ve crossed the Rubicon, that I’ve done this and that. At a suitable moment, after the Election, I may ask for him to be replaced because of a breakdown of confidence between us.

  Monday 15 July

  Dinner with Jim Callaghan. He talked about how he didn’t let the Foreign Office bully him, had only one red box every night and read the telegrams.

  We discussed the Election, which he thought would be in October, and that we would win. He didn’t think there would be an economic crisis between now and then.

  We went on to the Party and the Left. He knows nothing about the Left at all. Never heard of the ultras, never realised that the Trotskyites were critical of Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, of Michael Foot, myself and Eric Heffer as ‘fake’ left. He simply knew nothing about it.

  He was worried about Communists in the Party because ‘I know documents pass across’. I was sure he, as a former Home Secretary, knew these things, but he said that it wasn’t from being in the Home Office but from other sources. I said that I remembered him discussing with me the possibility of preventing Hugh Scanlon’s election to the AUEW. I told him I wasn’t worried about the Communists. They had no appeal whatever to the young, they were very bureaucratic and stick-in-the-mud.

  Then he asked me about the industrial policy and how I felt about being a bogeyman. I said I didn’t take it personally. He thought that if we lost the Election, people would blame me. I doubted that. Finally, he told me that he might give up next year, and I said, ‘Now, look, Jim, you’re sixty-two, Churchill became Prime Minister at sixty-four. You’ve got ten more years of political life in you if you want it. That’s the decision you’ve got to make. You’ve got to keep yourself available.’

  Well, then he declared that he didn’t want to be Leader. He repeated it so many times that it was obvious that he did. He said he had told Harold that if Harold was going to retire, he must give Jim three months’ notice so that Jim could retire before him.

  I pointed out that we didn’t know what was going to happen. I stressed that I knew that Jim disapproved of me very much and didn’t agree with me, but nevertheless I liked him very much. I told him that I couldn’t talk like this with Roy or Denis.

  Returning to the theme of the General Election, he thought it would be a very bitter period if we were to lose. I said that we mustn’t lose, but that it would still be a bitter period if we won. Jim wasn’t sure he’d want to be Leader during such a period. Then he’d be sixty-six before the Election in 1979. He’d obviously worked it all out. I said that he must be available, that’s all, like Cincinnatus.

  Wednesday 24 July

  At a meeting in my office of Eric Heffer, Frank Beswick, Michael Meacher and Gregor MacKenzie, I got Part, who has been made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, GCB, to bring out his ribbon and chain and cross which he had received this morning from the Queen. I took lots of photographs of him and somehow he looked so ridiculous taking such simple and innocent pleasure from it all, that it gave me a feeling of being one-up for the rest of the morning.

  Hilary and Rosalind came over to the House of Commons and we had dinner together. Hilary came up to see my room and to use the lavatory, and there was Roy Jenkins smoking a big cigar, having forgotten to lock the door!

  Thursday 25 July

  At 121 went to Cabinet We discussed pensions, or rather Barbara spoke for twenty-five minutes. Then Denis made two points which Barbara answered. This went on for about forty minutes and in the end she lost. She should have simply said, ‘Well, this is pretty non-controversial. I have no doubt everyone has read it; and it has been agreed by the Social Services Committee’, and she should have left it at that. She really talked herself out, not for the first time.

  I passed a lot of little notes to Bob Mellish during this carry-on. ‘As Chief Whip, can’t you move the closure?’ and ‘Perhaps she will have to stop for lack of food,’ and ‘It looks as if only the Dissolution of Parliament will stop her.’

  Wednesday 31 July

  Caroline and Joshua arrived at 12 and came over with me to the House. Jim Callaghan was making his statement on Cyprus and I followed with my statement on Concorde. I got some hostile questions, some friendly ones, and the Bristol MPs spoke. It was really exciting: I have saved Concorde and that is now off my chest.

  The next statement on shipbuilding was also mine and I had the enormous pleasure of announcing the nationalisation of the shipbuilding industry. I worked so hard on the problems as Minister of Technology when I knew things weren’t right, so I had given a solemn pledge that I would nationalise, a pledge which I was able to discharge. It gave me a tremendous thrill.

  To the meeting of the Cabinet committee on my White Paper The Rege
neration of British Industry, set up and chaired by Harold. The NEB’s main strength in manufacturing would come from the acquisition of a number of key firms – that is to say, profitable firms, not just lame ducks. There was a great struggle but I think I got my way.

  We came to future acquisitions and there was a real battle over whether or not we would say that if we provided regional grants, that would lead to public ownership. I said that when we were considering suitable firms for acquisition, we should add, ‘The NEB will act also as a means to a further substantial expansion of public ownership through its power to take a controlling interest in relevant companies in profitable manufacturing industry.’

  Dashed back to the office. It had been two and a quarter hours of absolute agony and bloodshed.

  Thursday 1 August

  Banner headlines attacking the nationalisation of shipbuilding in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, the Financial Times, and so on. The employers are hitting back but the case is so powerful, I don’t think we have to worry.

  At 9.30 Part came to see me with two really tough items. First, the idea of a popular version of the Industry White Paper: I had said I wanted a million leaflets to go out to industry and he replied that, because it was near an Election and it would be controversial, we probably wouldn’t be able to do it. I asked, ‘Why not? There’s either an Election or there isn’t and it would certainly be no more controverisal than the White Paper.’

  He said, ‘I can only tell you that it would not be possible.’

  Frances, who was sitting there, chipped in, ‘Secretary, if you say that, that would be taken by people to be a political judgement by the Civil Service.’

  Part picked up his folder, began to pack it and half stood up. ‘Unless Frances withdraws that, I’m not continuing the discussion.’