by Benn, Tony
‘Haifa minute,’ I said. ‘I’m not speaking for her, she’ll speak for herself. But quite frankly what you said about the leaflet being controversial could only mean politically controversial. It isn’t controversial for the Government, therefore it must be the Opposition who think it is. What is the Opposition objection? It’s political.’
This went on for a long time and Frances said, ‘I can’t withdraw my comments. All I said is that your remark will be seen by others to be politically motivated, that’s my best judgement.’ In the end, she did say, ‘It wasn’t meant to be a criticism of you.’ So then Part subsided.
The next thing he strongly objected to was my letter to the TUC in which I had offered them £20,000 to carry out research on job problems instead of giving the money to Cardiff University.
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘The Department has decided to conduct a different sort of programme,’ he explained.
‘Who is the Department? It’s me,’ I said.
‘But you can’t give money to a trade union.’
‘Why not? We give it to management, and to academics, why not to a trade union?’
He left and I must say it was exhausting. Part has been working to rule since we arrived and has done nothing to help me. He has just detached himself, and insofar as he has said anything, it has been completely obstructive. I think it all began when he asked me, ‘Are you seriously going to try to implement your programme?’
Saturday 3 August
The Daily Mail said, ‘Wilson Goes Cold on Benn’, and every other paper took up the same theme on its front page or inside. It was a very, very dishonest briefing by Number 10 and Harold knows it.
Roy Williams, Ray Tuite, Caroline and I were flown in a Beagle to Fairford for the Concorde test flight, where we met Brian Trubshaw, the chief test pilot, who is an old friend of mine. We saw the shop stewards, all Labour, had a few photographs taken and then we had lunch with the executive management of BAC, all of whom, of course, are Bristol Tories, albeit friendly ones.
At 1.40, about sixty of us climbed into the Concorde, and the great plane rumbled to the take-off point. There were a couple of American Airforce colonels from Edwardes Airforce Base on board, and the plane was crammed with technicians, because it was being treated as a proper test flight.
Some of the shop stewards had never flown before, even one of them who had been in the aircraft industry for thirty-seven years. Another had gone to confession last night, and another had made his will. Some of them had been up during the war but not since. It was astonishing that in the aircraft industry, nobody had thought of asking them to fly. Indeed, they had themselves asked many times and the management had always turned them down, and I insisted on taking them all up this time.
The whole plane shook. You could see the front portion, because it is a very long plane, just wobbling. Then this roaring take-off. We climbed through cloud, not steeply but quite quickly. We went out to a point off the coast of Cornwall and down to the Bay of Biscay; we reached Mach 1 as we went supersonic at about 7-800 miles an hour. It rose to 2.02 which was something like 1,800 nautical mph. Absolutely no sensation in the plane at all. Somebody made a threepenny bit stand up on his table in front of him. We just behaved like people on a coach trip to Weston-Super-Mare or Southend, taking photographs and talking. I did a radio interview for Bristol, introducing the morning show from the plane.
We came back over Bristol and turned and swung over the city, went to RAF Lyneham, flew over the airfield and landed at Fairford. I had another very brief interview with a couple of journalists about the flight. Then we went into the hangar and I thanked all the shop stewards and they thanked Brian Trubshaw.
It was an unforgettable day. I feel very pleased to have nursed that plane through its final crisis before its entry into service.
Friday 9 August
I stayed up to watch the special ‘Midweek’ programme and at 2am London time, Nixon gave his final broadcast as President. He made no real reference to Watergate and spoke as if he was a Prime Minister who had lost his parliamentary majority, full of the usual corny Nixon morality. An extraordinary broadcast. There was the fascination of seeing a great figure crushed; it was like a public execution.
In the evening I listened to Nixon’s emotional farewell to the staff of the White House, and President Ford’s inaugural speech, full of Midwest homespun philosophy.
Caroline and I went down to Stansgate. Very tired but awfully nice to be away.
Saturday 17 August
At 2 Caroline and I flew to Coventry, where we were met by the Lord Mayor. We were driven to the Triumph workers’ co-op at Meriden. It was a fantastic spectacle. There was the freshly painted factory with an old picket tent and brazier on the gate and a couple of bikes out front, with Bill Lapworth of the T&G, Dennis Johnson, the chief shop steward, John Gratton from the AUEW and their wives to meet us. We went round the factory and talked to the men; the conveners and the stewards themselves took us round, and it was just like going round a Chinese factory – they were speaking with such confidence about their own skill and their work and how they wouldn’t need as many supervisors and so on. Then we went into the canteen where tea was being served and Dennis Johnson introduced me briefly and I said a word; then Geoffrey Robinson spoke. There were one or two questions, and I described our industrial policy, and then they sang ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ which was very touching.
Sunday 25 August
When the crisis comes, and it will probably be over a slump or Europe, a few people will go; Reg Prentice, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and one or two others are bound to slip away into the centre ground, and the Labour Party will have to build itself up again.
Tuesday 10 September
Industrial Development Committee of Cabinet at 3.1 asked the Committee to note that the workers’ co-operative at IPD was coming along well, and to authorise money for the Receiver to keep it going until the end of November. I was deeply committed to this and I believed we must succeed.
Harold Lever sat there bursting with laughter and Denis Healey thought it was crackers. Harold Wilson said, ‘It was in my last Election address; we’ll have to do something until the Election is over.’ Utterly cynical. Frankly if that little discussion had been recorded, it would have destroyed the credibility of the Party completely.
Anyway, I said, ‘Well, you tell me how you are going to get people to take a £20-a-week wage cut, as is happening in Coventry now, to work for the co-operative. And you tell me where you will get people to exercise the responsibility that they are able to show. Merseyside is an absolute desert, a battlefield, and we must deal with it.’
At 4.30 Sir Douglas Allen, the new Permanent Secretary at the Civil Service Department, came to see me. He used to be at the Department of Economic Affairs with George Brown and told some funny stories about him.
Saturday 14 September
I am not sure about the Election – my thoughts go up and down. I must record here too that Caroline is finding the strain appalling. She feels that, being under the shadow of a Cabinet Minister, everything she does is dismissed. I agree that this is a real sacrifice that the wives of politicians have to make.
Monday 16 September
The Central Intelligence Agency, through William Colby, the Director-General, has been giving evidence in Washington and has openly admitted that the CIA spent $4 million undermining the Allende Government in Chile. This of course is far worse than Watergate though it receives very little public comment, and it is a candid admission of how they do it. One has to keep an eye out for the role of British Intelligence here at home. Apparently a man called Cord Meyer was sent to London by the CIA to work with the British Labour Movement, and one would be foolish to underestimate the extent to which American business is secretly mobilising in order to defeat the Labour Government, and particularly policies on which we are going to fight the Election.
Wednesday 18
September
A Cabinet had been called this morning and Harold said, very solemnly, as if he were announcing a great event, ‘Colleagues, I must tell you that Her Majesty the Queen . . .’ There was some chatting going on and he said, ‘Silence, order. I am telling you that Her Majesty the Queen has assented that there should be a Dissolution of Parliament and an Election on Thursday 10th October, and that the announcement will be made at 12.45.’ Well, since everybody knew quite well that that was what it was about, there wasn’t much excitement.
There was some discussion about smears, and Barbara Castle said that she had heard that the Sunday Times was going to reveal that Ted Short owned six houses; and Harold said there was a rumour that his income tax returns had been photocopied, and so on.
Thursday 10 October
Polling Day. To Bristol Transport House, where the Daily Mirror was waiting – they photographed me at a couple of polling stations and on top of the car with my loudspeaker.
At 1 o’clock we had lunch and I made a further thermos so I could drink tea from my tin mug while sitting on top of the car. The seat was so hard, I got really sore. Fortunately, there was very little rain but it was cold up there and I had my anorak and blanket round me.
Josh arrived in the afternoon. He and Stephen went around together all afternoon and were terrific. We worked right through, had a cup of tea with George Easton, then finished at about 8.45 and went back to the hotel for a meal.
The results began coming in. The polls this morning were showing on average a 5.5 per cent Labour lead but it became quite clear that this distribution of our lead varied very much according to which part of the country it was, and in the Tory marginals, where they were fighting like hell, they did actually manage to hold their own. The computer began by predicting a 66 overall majority, but it narrowed and narrowed as the night went on.
To the count at about 12.10. BBC and ITN television said that mine was the only result they intended to show from the South West, and when I asked all the Labour agents who were gathered in the classroom, which we had booked and provided with a kettle, milk, teabags and sugar, there was an overwhelming vote against letting the cameras in to the declaration. ITN and the BBC were extremely angry. The result came out at about 1.15 am, a great deal earlier than in the last Election. My majority was 9,373 compared with 7,912 in February. I had a 17.7 per cent majority and my percentage of the vote rose from 47 per cent to 49.1 per cent. It was an absolutely superb result.
I went back to the hotel and watched the results until about 4 am. The computer prediction was of a Labour majority of five by the time I went to bed. In the event it was three.
Saturday 12 October
The Economist has demanded my dismissal as Secretary for Industry. Frank McElhone rang to say he thought it was quite possible that Harold might move me – that is very much the rumour. But Jack Jones, I think, probably wouldn’t favour that Nobody can now claim that I did the Party any damage in the Election. Harold’s own Election campaign was trifling and unimportant, with no real content; that man is capable of being Prime Minister four times without doing anything to change the structure of power in society.
Thursday 17 October
Caroline and I went to Tommy Balogh’s house for the left-wing dinner. Judith Hart was upset and told me that Harold had called her in at 2.30 and had said, ‘I can’t appoint you back to your department because I understand you have got Communist connections.’
She said to Harold, ‘I have never been a Communist.’
‘No,’ said Harold. ‘But I understand you have been contacted.’
She said, ‘Well, my son is a Communist.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ said Harold.
‘Well, I did ring John Gollan, the Secretary of the Communist Party, in September to say I couldn’t speak at the Chile meeting in Scotland because Jimmy Reid (a leading Communist Party member) would be there.’
‘Oh,’ said Harold, ‘that’s getting nearer the mark.’
She told me she got angry and decided that if she was sacked, she was sacked, and went back to her office to wait, but was called by Harold at 6 o’clock and told it was all right.
It is significant that the security services decided to pick off Judith Hart, very significant. And it is significant that Harold decided to take it up, having known her since 1959; he would have to pitch his judgement against the security services’ judgement. It shows the sort of thing we are up against. It means the security services will pick me off if they have half a chance.
Judith said she was just angry with Harold but in fact she was weeping, she was so distressed.
Friday 18 October
I discussed Judith’s story with Frances and speculated again as to why the security services had chosen this moment to go for Judith and why Harold had done it that way. I told Frances I had been very surprised that Harold had rung me up during the Election in Bristol and asked me if I knew anything about Bickenhall Mansions; had I been lured there to a flat to smoke cannabis? He had told me a story about Marcia’s handbag having been taken and someone telling her to collect it from a certain flat, and she was afraid if she did she would be compromised in some way. I told Frances I had thought nothing of it.
She said, ‘Oh yes, I heard that story during the Election.’
Saturday 19 October
Frank McElhone rang, shocked by Keith Joseph’s speech in Birmingham, and saying that it would thoroughly upset the Catholic Church. Joseph’s speech on ‘The remoralisation of Britain’ was an attack on permissiveness on the Mary Whitehouse model, and had advocated birth control for poor families so as to reduce the number of children they would produce, since the mothers were unfit to look after them. It was a complete master-race philosophy; the theory that the problem is the immorality of the poor rather than poverty is a most reactionary idea bordering on Fascism.
Sunday 20 October
The papers today covered Joseph’s speech. The Churches have already attacked it and I must say it will do a great deal to repel people from the Tories; I think he may have thrown away the Tory leadership by being so explicit. His plan to deal with inflation by throwing people out of work, then when they are poor implying they are not fit to have children and that they are immoral, is so easy to destroy.
Monday 21 October
Went in to the office after lunch and I had a meeting with Secretary about advisers. Part treats me like a consultant psychiatrist would a particularly dangerous patient, and at any moment I expect him to ring a bell and a fat, male nurse in a white jacket will come and give me an injection.
Friday 25 October
Part told me that officials had been shocked that I had described the planning agreements as an extension of collective bargaining into bargaining for power. The officials who had been discussing this at the CBI now felt that they’d been engaged in a complete confidence trick.
I said, ‘I’m very sorry but what did you think the fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power was all about if it wasn’t this? I’ve made endless speeches about this over the years and you must take them seriously. If people don’t take them seriously and choose to present the argument in another way, well that’s a problem for them. What I’m trying to do is to take the enormous power of the trade union movement and harness it to productive effort.’
‘Well, Secretary of State, the problem is that you are trying to proceed with seven-league boots, and we think you’ve got to go more slowly,’ he replied.
‘Maybe seven-league boots,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been in the Department for seven months and I’m not aware of having done anything, made any progress at all. I’ve spent no money, got no legislation through, and I’m trying to get some indication that things are moving at all.’
Then he said that other officials felt that I was difficult to work with, and although they were absolutely loyal in interdepartmental discussions, officials in other departments had said on occasions that the Secret
ary of State for Industry had gone completely off his rocker.
‘My view is perfectly straightforward. I try to say the same thing at the Conference, in Parliament and in the Department – and I don’t agree that these ideas are so very absurd Of course, I’m in a minority in the Cabinet.’
‘Ah well, you’re thought of as a devious Minister who mobilises people outside in support of your view in the Cabinet.’
Whether he was threatening to resign or not, I don’t know, but there was a sort of vague hint of warning in the exchange. Part really is an impossible man, and I would get rid of him if I could. Roy Williams said it was quite untrue that officials found me difficult to work with. There were a lot of them who were extremely attracted by the ideas, and loyal to them. He thought that Secretary was speaking more for himself.
Tuesday 29 October
I heard that there is a plan to put armed guards to protect all Cabinet Ministers, after yesterday’s car bomb in Dennis Howell’s wife’s car.
Friday 8 November
To the NVT motorcycle works at Small Heath in Birmingham for what turned out to be a very hostile meeting with about fifty shop stewards. I made a short speech and then they turned on me. ‘You’re just a tin-pot king thinking you can impose your will. You don’t care about the jobs here. Why should the Meriden works have help? Is it really a co-operative?’
From there I went in to the mass meeting in the canteen, where there were two or three thousand workers. Not a single shop steward wanted to come on the platform with me so I climbed on by myself, sat on the table and picked up the mike. It was a pretty rough, hostile meeting. I described what had happened and that I would try to give them an assurance of their future if we could get an expansion programme going.
Poore had clearly recognised that the feelings of the shop stewards and of the workers at Small Heath were against the Meriden co-operative. He had said this to me many times and I hadn’t believed him, but it seems that he was to some extent right.
