by Benn, Tony
Dear Secretary of State,
It was sad that, for whatever reason and perhaps due to a misunderstanding, we did not say goodbye to each other when you left the Department. At any rate I want to write now on behalf of the staff of the Department as well as myself, to thank you for all the many courtesies you displayed towards your civil servants, and so far as I am concerned, the sympathetic consideration you showed to me during my recent illness.
It was especially kind of you to find the time to come and visit me in the hospital and write as you did to my wife with your programme of radical change. Granted the political balance within the Cabinet, you were bound to face your senior advisers with some difficult problems, but whatever our professional anxieties were from time to time, we enjoyed the challenges and the stimulation, and you were generous in your appreciation of the support that you received on such key subjects as the Industry Bill and the Post Office.
We admired your outstanding skill in communication (even when, occasionally, we were worried about what you were communicating!) and the deftness of your drafting. But, important though these are, they are less significant than the general thrust of your philosophy, so clearly illustrated in its many facets in the book of speeches (and it is characteristic I know that they were speeches and not private memoranda) that you kindly gave me.
In our different careers we have both sailed through rough waters and, indeed, I expect we should each be surprised if the waters were ever to become smooth, and possibly not know what to do with ourselves if that were to happen! For the marriage of ideas and reality is unending and fascinating, and the responsibility for the fate of others is an unremitting burden for people who are in positions of leadership.
But where would either of us be without such challenges – and how would either of us fare without the imperturbable and invaluable help of such people as Roy Williams?
I send you from myself, Peter Carey and all those who served you in this department, the most sincere salutations together with my own warm thanks for your personal kindness.
Yours sincerely,
Antony Part
No one can resent a warm letter; in the end I sent the following reply:
Dear Sir Antony,
It was very good of you to write and I appreciated it. I well realise that my brief period in the Department of Industry imposed a heavy strain on you and your officials arising from new policies and initiatives which in turn aroused a major public debate.
Throughout all this I received every possible personal help and I hope you will convey my gratitude to all those involved at various levels, from your own throughout the Department, and including the Private Office.
I am sorry that the pace of the reshuffle made personal farewells impossible, but that is one of the hazards of political life. I do hope you are completely fit again and that the anxieties of the winter will never recur.
With kind regards,
Tony Benn
Wednesday 2 July
At 9.15 I saw Bernard Ingham, my new press officer, who asked me about my personal position. I told him I was strongly opposed to the proposal for public expenditure cuts and that there were four options: to put up with it, to oppose it from the inside, to come out and oppose it constructively, or to come out and oppose it destructively. I thought opposing it from the inside was perhaps the best thing to do.
He asked if it would be a good idea to brief Ian Aitken of the Guardian. I arranged for this to be done later.
Thursday 3 July
At 7.30 a group of Ministers gathered in my room – Peter Shore, Michael Foot, Stan Orme, Albert Booth, Joan Lestor, Michael Meacher, and Barbara Castle. Frances Morrell joined us. At the prospect of resignations by the Left, Barbara began shouting, ‘The Left, it is always the Left, you always lose. Why don’t you fight? Why don’t you put up an alternative?’ Shirley Williams has the room next door and the walls are so thin, she probably heard every word.
I said, ‘I put up an alternative months ago on import controls.’
‘Oh, that’s no good,’ she said. Barbara thinks socialism is about the social wage, which of course is based on the expenditure of her own department. Although she argues against a statutory policy, she would accept it if it would prevent public expenditure cuts in the DHSS. Actually she’s not on our side at all, she’s on the other side.
Boy, was she shrieking, throwing her arms in the air. ‘All right, you say I am not fair, but nobody has ever been fair to me.’ That revealed the burning sense of personal injustice which makes Barbara tick. She is a tough woman and she certainly fights for what she gets, but she is very cynical, and she hates my guts. One thing’s for sure, all of this will get back to Harold. If Barbara tells him we are thinking of resigning, that will really worry him.
Sunday 6 July
The Observer had a huge two-page spread on the government U-turn. It included a leading article praising Wilson for adopting the Heath policy, and a piece on Jack Jones describing him as the Godfather, privy to everything that was going on and supported by Michael Foot.
Tuesday 15 July
At 3.30 Sir Eric Drake of British Petroleum came to see me and I went out of my way to be charming. He said that government holdings of British Petroleum shares must be kept below 50 per cent because it would destroy the credibility of the company in the United States, in New Zealand and elsewhere – BP operates in eighty countries. Therefore, he wanted the BP Burmah shares sold off in the open market but not to foreign governments. Well, I’m not accepting that.
I had contemplated giving Drake the chairmanship of BNOC but he was so negative and hostile that I changed my mind. I’m glad I saw him and it is probably a good thing to be on reasonably good terms with him, though he is the most Tory of Tories.
Spent most of the afternoon on the Petroleum Bill Committee.
Spoke to Gerald Kaufman, who told me that, at a meeting in Oxford, a man had got up and said, ‘The only reason that Tony Benn didn’t nationalise Westland is that he has shares in it.’
Well, that’s an extraordinary story. I was grateful for him telling me.
Thursday 17 July
The papers over the last couple of days have reported the news from New York that Exxon has openly admitted to paying $51 million (£20 million) to Italian politicians and political parties over the last nine years. That’s over £2 million a year flowing from a single oil company into Italian political funds. The number of people who could be bought, corrupted, suborned, diverted, blackmailed and assassinated with £20 million defies the imagination. One shouldn’t be in any doubt at all as to what we’re up against and I shall use this if necessary to defend the development of BNOC.
Saturday 19 July
Went shopping with Melissa and we walked up Kensington High Street. We went into Biba’s store which really is the end of a dream. You can see why it failed really because it was the final fling for the excrescences of sixties fashion, now all gone bust.
Tuesday 22 July
I heard today that the problem of what we would do with oil off the Falkland Islands has been settled by the Foreign Office. They have insisted that we agree to discuss with Argentina joint exploration of the South Atlantic, and this is intended to get us off the hook.
Lunch with Frank Kearton at Courtaulds headquarters in Calenese House. I have known Frank now for nine years and he is resigning tomorrow as Chairman of Courtaulds.
We talked about Harold Wilson and he said he had met Harold recently and Harold had told him, ‘In politics, timing is everything,’ and compared himself to Stanley Baldwin. Harold has compared himself to all sorts of people in his Walter Mitty life. He was the Kennedy figure in 1962 with ‘Let’s get Britain moving again’. Then he became a bit of a Macmillan figure. Then he and Lyndon Johnson were the greatest pals. Now he’s Baldwin. That just about sums him up.
We discussed Jack Jones, for whom Frank has enormous respect because he’s a great statesman. We talked about worker participation and eco
nomic policy and I mentioned the co-operatives. I said that the Treasury was now running things.
‘I don’t think the Treasury has a policy,’ he said. ‘They stumble along from day to day. When William Armstrong resigned from the Civil Service, he had a little dinner party at Sunningdale and I was invited. He just kept saying that all was lost, and there was no hope for the country and he couldn’t see his way forward at all. I have never seen a man so utterly defeated.’
I said, ‘That’s because he was the one who persuaded Heath to drop the Party’s objections to the prices and incomes policy, and then he saw the policy crumble in the face of the miners and I think he was utterly demoralised.’
Melissa came into the House and everyone admired her out on the terrace, saying she looked like an actress from a television programme, ‘The Main Chance’. She was shy as the MPs came up to speak to her but I was so proud of her.
Tuesday 29 July
Yet more strange goings-on with our rubbish. For some time it has been collected very early each morning, whereas before, Kensington Borough Council only collected it once a week. We wondered who was taking it and, as we read recently in the paper that someone had bribed the trashmen in Washington to give them all the rubbish from Kissinger’s house, it occurred to me that this might be happening to me. So I decided to buy a shredding machine and also Joshua fitted up a wire leading from the rubbish area at the front of the house to a bell in the house.
Talked to Bernard Donoughue, who was interested in the fact that officials were mainly concerned to protect the confidentiality of official advice to Ministers, which is why the Crossman Diaries worried them so much.
At Cabinet we talked about Meriden and the future of the co-operatives, and the discussion threw light on a number of things. First of all, it was absolutely clear that both Court Line, and Meriden, which is Eric Varley’s razor job, are being used to discredit my period at the Department of Industry. They are trying to make out that it was incompetence on my part, and linking it with Rolls Royce, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and Concorde.
Secondly, Harold’s strategy in moving me from Industry is not only to reverse the policy, but also to ensure that I get the blame for the troubles that come when the policy is reversed. He is hoping to chip away at my standing within the Movement at the same time as the new policy is being prepared – a Treasury policy under which people will not be able to go to the Industry Department for money because there will be no money, no help, no tea and no sympathy. Gerald Kaufman is certainly in there digging around seeing what he can find that might be damaging to me.
Friday 5 September
Got to the House of Commons at 12.10 and missed the bomb at the Hilton Hotel by about ten minutes. It killed two people and wounded sixty-nine.
Thursday 25 September
There were more reports in the press on the hearings in Washington which have revealed that the CIA was opening the mail of senior politicians, including Nixon before he was elected. One really is indebted to the American investigative process for bringing things to light. No doubt similar things have happened here and exactly on the same basis, but they are kept completely secret.
Caught the train to Blackpool and checked into the Imperial Hotel.
Friday 26 September – Labour Party Conference, Blackpool
The papers today reported the admission by the FBI that they had engaged in over 250 domestic burglaries for political and other purposes. There was also a report in the New York Tunes that the CIA was again giving money to West European socialist parties to intervene in Portugal.
Just before the Executive at 10 I had a word with Bryan Stanley of the POEU and I mentioned my concern about telephone-tapping.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘there’s no question about it. I believe that the Tories were engaged in a widespread surveillance campaign involving the telephone-tapping of activists in the trade union movement and the Labour Party, as well as in the Communist Party. The aim was to prepare a general dossier and, in the run-up to an Election, blacken the character of political opponents.
‘Whenever I tried to find out anything about it from my own members, I discovered that this telephone-tapping is done by specially recruited people who, though they may be members of my union, are not prepared to say a word about it. There is tight security amongst them. It goes on on a more limited scale now, but during the referendum campaign, for example, people in the anti-Common Market groups on one or two occasions picked up their telephones and found recordings of what they’d just said coming back to them.’
Sunday 28 September
When we were last at the Imperial Hotel two years ago, Tony Wilson, a seventeen-year-old who worked in the hotel as a sort of page boy, told us that he earned only £14 for an eighty-hour week. I suggested he form a union. Well, he knocked on the bedroom door and there he was with his little spectacles and his cheeky manner, and he said, ‘Oh, Mr Benn, I formed that union. When they heard that Mr Benn had suggested it, it spread like wildfire. We’ve got the TGWU here – and we’re 60 per cent unionised – and we’ve now got £20 for a forty-hour week.’
I was invited to the POEU/UPW dinner and was asked to speak. Afterwards Bryan Stanley paid a tribute to Roy, Denis and Jim, and said, ‘I want to say a word about Tony Benn. I’m very sorry that he was moved from the Department of Industry and from Telecommunications. It’s not for me to comment on the circumstances but he was the best Minister the Post Office has ever had because he identified himself with our members. We were very sad to see him go.’
It was a courageous speech and Jim and Denis looked absolutely sick. I wish Harold had been there but he arrived later, just as we were thanking and leaving. I tried to avoid him but he saw me through the door.
Wednesday 1 October
I worked till 3 in the morning on my speech for the industrial policy debate today. Judith presented the industrial policy statement in a very academic way. There were various other speakers. A Young Socialist from West Stirlingshire made a marvellous speech. It was the youngsters in many ways who stole the limelight. One man got up and said, ‘I cannot let this occasion go by without saying plainly that the removal of Tony Benn from the Department of Industry simply for implementing our policies has created a deep mood of cynicism and despair.’
I spoke for about fifteen minutes and it was very effective. I got a rather different sort of standing ovation from Michael, Denis and Harold, in that it began on the fringes and moved into the middle. I don’t think Jack Jones stood up and I know he was reading his newspaper throughout my speech, as he had through Eric Heffer’s and Judith Hart’s.
I had been asked to go with Jack Jones to see a delegation from the TGWU about offshore oil workers, so I left the platform and Jack walked out with me. Well, he turned on me and I hope I can be forgiven for repeating what he said.
‘What’s the fucking use of talking about redundancies in that general way when I’ve got these fucking workers and you have done fuck all about them?’
‘The offshore oil workers?’ I asked.
‘Yes, these people at Graythorpe. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.’
‘Not only have I been there, Jack, but I’ve been trying to get new orders for them from the oil companies for the last two months. Indeed, yours is the one union that hasn’t taken any interest whatever in this issue.’
He said, ‘Well, what about getting union recognition on the rigs?’
‘I’m working on that too.’
‘The National Union of Seamen have done a deal on their own in which the men on the rigs are members of the NUS, not the TGWU.’
I said, ‘You’ve been slow off the mark. They’ve done it and it’s nothing to do with me. I’m not in charge of the National Union of Seamen.’
He was boiling with rage. ‘Who do they think they are, all this criticism of the Government?’ and he referred to the Tribune Group. I told him I wasn’t even a member of the Tribune Group.
We arrived at the Planet
Room, where all these awfully nice guys – shop stewards and one full-time official – were waiting in the hallway. I shook hands with them and in Jack’s presence I told them what I had done.
‘I’ve been up to Scotland. I’ve been to Graythorpe and Nigg, and I’ve seen the union committee and the Scottish TUC. I’ve written to the oil companies, and the OPEC oil prices will help. I’ve also arranged a new licensing round. I’ll continue to help in any way I can. I’ll keep in touch with Jack Jones. If you want to come to London you can see me. Jack has been pressing me on this.’ This was quite untrue and he knew it, and when I said that I think he felt guilty.
Friday 10 October
I had a dream that Harold had called me in and said, ‘I want you to be Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household with a seat in the House of Lords in charge of boxing under the Minister of Sport.’ He told me this in the great Cabinet Room, which was full of people. ‘I’m afraid this doesn’t mean a place in the Cabinet for you,’ he said. I replied, ‘Harold, I must think about it,’ and Sir John Hunt said, ‘Boxing is very important. We must preserve the quality and excellence of the Lonsdale Belt.’
Tuesday 21 October
The Daily Mirror ran a story under the heading, ‘Britain to become the nuclear dustbin of the world’, by a Stanley Bonnet. In fact, the man behind it was Bryn Jones from Friends of the Earth, who is the industrial correspondent on the Mirror. It was about the BNFL contract under which we would reprocess 4,000 tons of irradiated fuel from Japan and would then have the problem of disposing of the toxic waste. I decided to go on the ‘World at One’ so a chap came along to interview me. I think I put the case across and I told the Department to put out a background note.
I rang Marcia and invited her for a sandwich lunch. She came in Harold’s car and gave me a message from Harold, ‘Tell him to keep cheerful.’ I asked how it was going at Number 10 and she said it was awful. ‘In the old days I had Gerald Kaufman to work with but now it’s Haines who’s the official man and Bernard Donoughue,’ whom Marcia thought was just feeding Harold’s insecurities.
