by Benn, Tony
It must be the first time in history, I think, that the Nuclear Inspectorate have been cross-examined by their responsible Minister, or indeed that the Minister has ever revealed in public the interrogation of his officials about nuclear policy, or about anything.
Monday 17 January
With Caroline to Tribune’s fortieth birthday party at Number 10 – it was immense fun. Jim was charming and had baked a cake which said, ‘Happy Birthday Tribune – Life Begins at Forty’, with a red ribbon round it. He made a little speech saying he read Tribune and had done for years, and yearned for the day when he would agree with it.
Then Jim took us down to the Cabinet Room, which I wanted Caroline to see. We all stood there – all the wives and Dick Clements, the Editor of Tribune, and his staff. Jim told me to stand behind my usual seat. ‘Now, where do we all sit?’ he asked. So I began going round and we could remember our side of the table, but when it came to the other side Jim couldn’t remember. I went through them. ‘There’s Harold Lever, and next to him Fred Peart. Next to him David Ennals, then John Silkin . . .’ When we got to the end we couldn’t think of anybody else. So Jim pulled out his diary and said, ‘Well, let’s look it up and see who else is in the Cabinet.’ ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘we forgot Edmund Dell.’ In the far corner was Bill Rodgers’s seat. We’d all forgotten about him. There was a great deal of laugher, and it was very agreeable.
We had a word with Denis and Edna Healey. Denis gave a good imitation of Mike Yarwood. He was full of bonhomie and goodwill.
Tuesday 18 January
I worked until 2, then up at 6.30 to go off to begin my tour of European capitals as President of the Council of Energy Ministers.
I took my own mug and lots of tea bags. When we arrived in Paris we were met by the Ambassador, Nico Henderson, a tall, grey-haired, scruffy man, almost a caricature of an English public schoolboy who got to the top of the Foreign Office. I don’t think I had ever met him before; he was rather superior and swooped me up in his Rolls Royce.
The end of a day of negotiations, and I enjoyed it very much. In a way it’s very relaxing not to be a British Minister, just a European one.
But I must admit that the standard of living of, for example, the Ambassador – a Rolls Royce, luxurious house, marvellous furniture, silver plate at dinner – is indefensible. Ours is a sort of corporate society with a democratic safety valve. What a long time it will take to put it right. And how do you get measured steps of advance? Undoubtedly openness is one, and negotiations and discussions with the trade unions is another. Nobody should have power unless they are elected.
Wednesday 19 January
At 7 in came the butler and the sub-butler with the silver salver and silver teapot and China tea and lemon, scrambled egg, crispy bacon, toast and marmalade.
We flew off to Brussels and went to the international press centre.
They hadn’t really opened by 10.30 but we found a little corner in this lush building, had a cup of coffee, and who should buzz in but Sir Donald Maitland, our Ambassador to the EEC, who always looks very busy.
We sat and talked for a bit and the journalists, who had arrived by 10.45, were drinking at the bar. I had been warned that not many people would come to a press conference but about thirty-five journalists, French and British and from all over the Community, turned up. I simply told them what I had told every Minister.
Maitland looked terribly agitated. I think it was partly at the idea of the Community having an Eastern policy, which has terrified the Foreign Office – because they know nothing about it. I asked permission from nobody to broach the subject.
We went off from there for a lunch with the Belgians, given by Sir David Muirhead, our Ambassador to the Brussels Government, who lives in another of these great fancy houses with a butler, a sub-butler, a log fire and God knows what. I found the Belgians terribly funny, by which I mean that they laughed at my jokes.
The truth is that everyone who works at Brussels, be they Ministers, bureaucrats, representatives of the delegations or the press, have just got used to the fraud of it all, the muddle, the confusion and the obscurity. So, when someone comes along and says Ministers must be in charge and they must meet a directive and do things openly, then it is like saying the emperor has no clothes on. That is really the reaction.
We flew to Luxembourg, a ghostly airport which was absolutely empty. A snow plough or something had been along the runway, a large wartime runway built for the B52 Flying Fortress bombers. Gradually we saw these tiny figures in the snow waiting for us. It was like an exchange of prisoners in a spy story.
The Ambassador, Antony Acland, a relation of Richard Acland of the famous Devon family, was there and we drove off, together with the Permanent Secretary, into this idyllic little town and up to the twelfth floor of a tall office block. There was Monsieur Mart, who is actually called the Minister for the Middle Classes, Economy, Transport and Energy! He is a jolly man, and I liked him.
Luxembourg would really like to be a province in a bigger Europe. The people don’t like the way the big nations fight for their own interests. Mart interpreted my informality and particularly my external perspectives as being farsighted and bold and leading only to common policies. Although I wasn’t really deceiving him – I don’t believe in a federal Europe – I do believe in harmonising our approach one way or another by agreements, as long as we don’t get all these directives and regulations; that is what I object to, the power of the Commission and the law-making. But as to agreements – I’m all for those.
Back to the airport and flew back to Northolt in the snow. Lovely to be home.
Thursday 20 January
I got into the office at 8.30 this morning. Brian Sedgemore, whose appointment as my PPS was announced today, was there; we had a talk and went over a speech I am giving at a Tribune Group meeting tonight.
Cabinet. We came to Devolution and I raised one point – that in the provision for a referendum there should also be a referendum for electors in England. I said I forecast that we wouldn’t get through a Bill under which the English were not also allowed to vote.
At the end of the Cabinet I passed a note over to Jim. Yesterday he had sent round a minute to all senior Ministers:
10 Downing Street
19 January 1977
BREVITY
The papers which I see – memoranda and reports addressed to me personally, as well as papers for Cabinet and its committees – are too long; and they seem recently to be getting longer. . . .
We cannot afford inflation in words and paper, any more than in our currency. It is often harder work to be brief – but only for the writer. We shall all benefit as readers. Let us adopt again in our ministerial papers the habit of setting out in plain words, and in short paragraphs, the main points (detail in appendices, if need be) and the recommendation. The same discipline should apply to memoranda etc addressed to the public bodies outside government and to the public. Please take any necessary action in your department to achieve this. Your Permanent Secretary should inform the Head of the Civil Service of what has been done and he will report to me.
L.J.C.
So in reply my note said:
PM
BREVITY
OK
A.W.B.
19.1.77
and I attached to it an extract from Mao’s collected works which began: ‘Let us now analyse stereotyped Party writing and see where its evils lie.’
I feel my relations with Jim are improving. I think maybe he needs me on the industrial democracy front, and now that Sedgemore is appointed I feel more cheerful.
After lunch I had a meeting with Friends of the Earth, and we had a fascinating discussion about civil liberties and nuclear power. They put a lot of questions to me; I said I would get them answered and write to them.
Saturday 22 January
Up early for my surgery all morning, then to the hall where the all-day policy conference of Bristol Labour Party was being hel
d.
I stayed for about three hours, shivering in this icy-cold, bare hall.
But the meeting was a display of basic democracy and basic decency. There was the Chairman sitting on the platform entirely by himself and a chap sitting at another little table who was the head of the standing-orders committee. He had a little handbell which he announced he would ring after three minutes, and twice after five minute if the speaker didn’t stop, then he would blow his whistle. Everyone laughed.
Most of the people were delegates and the agenda dealt just with Bristol issues. The first part was housing and the homeless, then direct labour, then resolutions about the Lord Mayor’s office, and so on.
It was a mixture of socialists, Marxists and Christians, with powerful speeches about the immorality of evicting families: seven families have been evicted in Bristol, they said. One was an old man dying of cancer, another was an old man with asthma, another a battered wife with two children.
Tuesday 1 February
At 9.30 this morning, Frances Morrell’s daughter Daisy, who is three and a half, came to the office. She had her hair done in little bows, and a red coat and a red anorak, and she was all shy. I showed her round the office and took lots of photographs of her and Frances.
Thursday 3 February
To Cabinet at 10.30. It was pouring with rain and there was a big traffic jam, due I think to a bomb scare in Whitehall. I had to run the last couple of hundred yards from Birdcage Walk to Number 10.
Unfortunately I have lost the notes I made at Cabinet – whether I left them at the Cabinet Office or dropped them somewhere I don’t know. Anyway I shall have to dictate it from memory.
First of all next week’s business, then a long discussion about how to handle the Scotland and Wales Bill because the Chief Whip reported that on his best estimate, after a great deal of lobbying and canvassing, we would be defeated by 39 votes on a timetable motion (guillotine). Michael Foot said it might be better to advance the referendum issue in the Bill and get that out of the way, and then proceed to the guillotine later.
The draft wording of the question which would be on the ballot paper for the Referendum was read out: ‘The Government has suggested the establishment of a Scottish Assembly under devolution proposals contained in the Scotland and Wales Act, under which Scotland would remain a part of the United Kingdom. Are you in favour of the implementation of this Act in Scotland?’ And the same for Wales.
Lunch with David Wood of The Times. He was born in Grantham, I think, and knew Margaret Thatcher’s father, a local shopkeeper who became an alderman; he remembered the daughter when she was a little girl. We had a long talk about the Samuel Smiles Victorian ideals of self-help, duty, etc, which David Wood believed in.
He remarked, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s a very cautious woman, you know, very cautious. She will have to get rid of Airey Neave and George Gardiner and broaden her base; she may be bold in thought but in action she will be very cautious. She wants to get on with the trade unions very much and thinks she can: she sees no reason why she shouldn’t. She knows they are powerful and she has got to learn to live with them. That’s the way the Tories operate.’
Friday 4 February
I had to deal with Amoco. On Monday night there had been long discussions with Amoco which went on until midnight and which were supposed to be concluded on Tuesday but had foundered on the simple point that the President of Amoco Europe, Mr Aune, the Amoco executive, Norman Rubash, and the lawyer, Ed Bissett, had declined to accept the form of words that Shell and Esso had accepted: namely that they would have a statement of intent as to their refinery policy in Britain and their readiness to try to optimise the use of North Sea oil; and that they would conduct their trade in a way that would maximise the benefit to the United Kingdom. They would not accept this because they claimed it would commit them legally to a £100 million investment in the Milford Haven refinery and they were not prepared to do that.
So I said to Frank Kearton, ‘Will you stick with me if I am strong?’ Frank was terribly keen and the officials did in effect agree, so I called in Aune and Rubash at 11.15 without any of the others. They had been warned of the attitude I would adopt and I think they wanted to test it.
With me I simply had James Bretherton (taking notes), Frank, and John Liverman, and I asked Aune and Rubash what had gone wrong. They produced a long explanation about how the whole thing had changed, they had never understood that what was wanted was this, and they had produced another draft. I said, ‘Look, I am not negotiating it. We were going to settle the whole thing on Friday and we went through the words very carefully.’ They said that the board of directors would never yield their powers over investment.
So I said, ‘You told me you were fully authorised to discuss it.’
‘Well,’ they said, ‘will you look at this new draft?’
‘No. I cannot go beyond the Shell-Esso arrangements.’
Rubash looked absolutely white. Aune looked shifty.
I continued, ‘That is it. You are dealing with Her Majesty’s Government and these participation talks are intended to make a real difference. We are not prepared to be pushed. You are not dealing with a sheikh in the 1940s, you know, you are dealing with the British Government in the 1970s.’
‘Well,’ they said, ‘This hundred million clause . . .’
‘I never mentioned a hundred million,’ I said. ‘You invented it and then you say it is a barrier. We have never asked that, but it is intended that there should be deep discussions about your market-policy – that is what the whole thing is about. You have to value the goodwill of the host government, and, if you don’t attach importance to that goodwill, that is a matter for you. Will you please let me know by tonight.’
While we were talking, messengers came in with tea, so I turned round and waved my hand and they took the tea away. I was just coming to the end of the discussion and inside I was boiling with rage – I felt like the president of a banana republic dealing with a multinational company. I’ll never forget that experience with Amoco. If they won’t co-operate they won’t get participation, and they won’t get the licence, and that’s it.
Saturday 5 February
I got home and worked like a fiend from about 1.30 to about 7.30, did my red box, signed all my letters, then put a few things in my satchel, put on my anorak, went to Liverpool Street and caught the train to Southminster, not having told Caroline, Lissie and Joshua, who were at Stansgate for the weekend, that I was coming.
I thought I would walk all the way to Stansgate but it would have taken about an hour and a half and I didn’t think I would make it so I rang Caroline from a call box. Actually she had been asleep for an hour but wouldn’t hear of me walking all the way and got out of bed. I had got about a third of the way to Stansgate when they picked me up. It was lovely, and I would have been absolutely miserable at home on my own.
Monday 7 February
Joe Haines’s book, The Politics of Power, is being serialised in the Daily Mirror and included a slashing attack on Marcia Williams. Marcia, who is in bed with a slipped disc and can’t get up, issued a statement saying that Joe Haines had once had a whisky bottle broken over him and she had had to sponge his coat. So it looks as if the gang has fallen out. Apparently this afternoon Harold went to visit Marcia at her bedside.
Thursday 10 February
Cabinet, and Jim said, ‘Before we start I would like to mention the Silver Jubilee; the Cabinet ought perhaps to consider giving a gift to the Queen – a token of some kind.’ So Shirley Williams suggested a saddle, because Jim had said we want to give her something she would really use. Someone else said don’t forget that Parliament gave Charles I a saddle, at which there was a lot of laughter.
I said, ‘We are a Labour Cabinet, so if we are going to give her something shouldn’t it be uniquely Labour?’ I added, ‘I am not suggesting a leatherbound volume of our constitution’ – at which there was a sort of groan around the whole Cabinet. Fred Peart put his head
in his hands and Jim said, ‘Let him finish.’ I continued, ‘Well, I think we should perhaps give her something that comes out of the Labour Movement. I have got in my office a vase, given me by the Polish Minister of Mines, carved out of coal by a Polish miner. What about that?’
Elwyn Jones said, ‘Well, in Wales we have beautiful clocks set in carved coal’, so the suggestion wasn’t entirely ridiculed. But I was interested in the reaction to the idea that we should give her something representing the work of working people.
Peregrine Worsthorne came to lunch; he is the Associate Editor of the Sunday Telegraph. I asked him about his work. He said he wrote on a Friday, and tomorrow he was going to write about Marcia and Joe Haines, and that the whole story reveals how corrupt government is, and why it should not have too much power. His article will show in effect how unfit for government Labour is, that respect for authority has been eroded by it, and this is damaging.
I told him my theory of the forty-year cycle: that there have to be real radical reforms about every forty years – 1832,1867,1906,1945,1980. He said, ‘Yes, but next time they will be right-wing. Mrs Thatcher will tear up the Welfare State by its roots, and the health service and education. That’s how the radicalism will manifest itself.’
I said, ‘Maybe you are right, you know. It is going to be pretty disruptive.’
He added, ‘She is prepared to deal with the unions as a power but with no social contract or wage control – she doesn’t believe in all that; she will just deal with them as a power in a monetarist society.’
So I said, ‘Well, you know Heath tried that with his monetarist policy, but he had to reverse it, and I think she will have to reverse it too.’
He asked me, ‘Aren’t you worried about the power of the unions?’
‘I know what you mean – the middle class is worried – but if I look at the powerful groups I have to deal with, the unions are only a part. All right, Jack Jones is powerful, but that’s nothing compared to what Fleet Street can do – it pillories you, holds you up to excoriation, Bernard Levin says you are mad. I feel like poor old Solzhenitsyn in Russia, except that Fleet Street can’t actually put me in a lunatic asylum. There is the power of the big oil companies who operate here, and are bigger than nation states. There is the IMF, which forces us to cut the Welfare State. In that jungle of power I don’t see the unions as being dominant.’
