by Benn, Tony
So I sent a message back saying that I wouldn’t comment on the non-proliferation aspects but I would like to comment on the energy implications. I got a message back that I wasn’t to do that either. It really is insulting, and I’m beginning to wonder whether Energy has now become far too important for me to remain in charge, and whether Jim might not try to move me to another department.
Saturday 23 April
James Bretherton rang to say there had been a blowout in the Ekofisk field and 4,000 tons of oil had bucketed into the sea in just twenty-four hours. I said I might go up there, and much of the morning was spent on that.
Jim rang me. ‘Your phone has been off the hook.’
‘I was just using it.’
‘Well, it was,’ he said. He was very shirty. ‘If you are going to look at the blowout, why don’t you go to Norway?’
I decided I would and sent a message.
Apparently the blowout is huge, there’s a force 10 gale and low cloud, but aircraft can’t fly lower than 5,000 feet in case there is an explosion, and ships have been banned for 25 miles around. I shall fly over the field and then go on to Stavanger or Oslo.
Sunday 24 April
Up at 6.30, and left for Northolt. I boarded an RAF Andover with James Bretherton, Bernard Ingham, Henry George, our Director of Petroleum Engineering, and a guy from the Board of Trade Marine Division, and we headed for the Ekofisk field.
We were kept at 3,000 feet and five nautical miles and it was a most remarkable sight – a great jet of oil and spray and the slick spreading a sheen over the water. A number of vessels were standing by, including a warship.
We cruised around for about half an hour, before going on to Oslo to meet the Industry and Foreign Ministers. We talked for two hours at the airport hotel and they reported what had happened and went into all the other aspects – terrorism, fire, cost, fisheries and research.
Flew back, gave some more interviews at Northolt and came home. There was some coverage on the news but not much.
Thursday 28 April
Cabinet at 10.30. David Owen reported on Pakistan and the Middle East.
David Ennals interrupted in his odiously helpful way. ‘I would like, Prime Minister, if I may, to intervene for a moment to say how well I feel David Owen has done in his recent visits to Africa and the Middle East, and perhaps it would be in order, since we don’t thank each other very much, for this to be said.’
So Jim observed, ‘Well, I said how well David had done last week. I can’t say it every week.’
I said, ‘I take it this is the equivalent of Idi Amin eating his Cabinet Ministers’ – referring to a story in today’s paper from a Ugandan defector that Amin had killed a member of his Cabinet, had his liver cut out and mixed with his lunch.
‘If I started eating my Cabinet I don’t know who I would eat first,’ said Jim, looking around the table and settling on me.
The rest of the Cabinet was devoted to the direct elections issue.
I had a meeting to review the case of a Mr Gillen, who died in the early Sixties of leukaemia, having worked for three years for the AEA. His widow was claiming that his illness was due to his work.
Jack Jones had written to me several times about it, so in the end I called this meeting with the AEA legal, professional and medical staff, and the Department of Social Security sent their administrative and medical people along. Alex Eadie was there with me – which was a great comfort because, having been a miner, he was familiar with the whole question of compensation cases. I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on, to be candid, but I went into it very carefully. At the tribunal in 1964 the whole thing had hinged on whether it was probable or merely possible that this guy had contracted leukaemia from his work in the AEA. The judgement had been that it was only possible.
But on questioning them I was told that Japanese survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki had suffered this particular type of leukaemia; secondly I drew out that there had been some marginal change in diagnostic and analytical skills since 1964; thirdly, that the National Radiological Protection Board had been set up since 1964; fourthly, that an appeal had actually been heard since 1964.
I decided to write to David Ennals and ask him to get the matter looked at again. I have never seen so many glum faces in my life.
Monday 2 May
First meeting at 10 was to prepare for the Downing Street summit with Carter.
The second item on the agenda was the implication of President Carter’s statement on energy, and David Owen had presented a paper which had been written by his officials. David declared at the beginning that the paper was too complacent – which it was.
I said, ‘I wasn’t consulted about this and my officials tell me they weren’t fully consulted. It is based on the assumption that there are no defects in our policy. We ought to be a bit more modest. What is happening now is the first serious re-examination of nuclear power; there are problems of plutonium loss and uranium loss, of toxic waste, the destination of which is undecided, of large-scale plutonium handling, of uranium supplies, of what to do about the fast breeder and about the export of sensitive technologies. We ought to have considered all this.’
David Owen thought we should welcome the Carter proposals and study them, we should link up with the USSR, and we should have some links with the IAEA and the nuclear suppliers group.
I added, ‘We are highly trusted in the United States through our scientific knowledge and technical capacity in nuclear matters, but we are not America, we are independent, unless we upset the EEC countries.’ All the officials nodded because they are determined that Britain must not alienate the French or the Germans. That is the main concern of the British Establishment – to bow and kowtow to Europe.
Thursday 5 May
Cabinet began at 10.30. As we were sitting down, Shirley said to me, ‘Your paper on nuclear policy was the most brilliant paper I have ever seen’ – referring to the one we discussed on Monday. So that strengthened my feeling that the social democrats are potential allies against nuclear power.
Jim referred to the summit of the industrial nations in London at the weekend and Carter’s visit to north-east England tomorrow. Carter would be tremendously well received, but he hadn’t realised what a row there would be over which colliery band should be chosen to play!
Saturday 7 May
At 12 Ron Vaughan came and drove me to Lancaster House to meet President Carter at his drinks party. It was absolutely jam-packed with journalists and Ambassadors wandering about, but I went through to the little room where we normally receive guests. Carter’s son Jeff was there; he is twenty-one, doing Geography and Geology at Washington, and wants to get involved in the International Geophysical Year. He was a real Southern lad from Georgia and he looked a bit awkward, yet you could see he was having the time of his life. He was obviously very proud of his dad and I rather liked him.
Well, I had to catch a train to Swindon at 1.20, and Carter still hadn’t arrived at 1 o’clock. It was clear that I wasn’t going to see him and I asked the people there whether I should go or stay. Some said I should stay, and that it was a great opportunity. But I decided to go and do my May Day meeting. Someone else said, ‘I am sure the President would expect you to keep in touch with the grass roots.’
So I said to young Jeff Carter, ‘Well, as I am going to miss your father, can I give you a message? I am the Secretary of State for Energy and, first of all, I hope he won’t be pressured into giving up his nuclear policy.’
‘Oh no, he won’t,’ he said.
‘And, secondly,’ I went on, ‘tell him we are old family friends of the Niebuhrs’ – at which point he interrupted and said, ‘Ah, my father has read every single word that Reinhold Niebuhr has written.’
‘Well,’ I added, ‘we used to stay with him in New York’, and I quoted Niebuhr’s remark that man’s capacity for evil makes democracy necessary and man’s capacity for good makes democracy possible. ‘Remember two Ns,’ I said. ‘
Nuclear and Niebuhr.’
I had brought a copy of my Levellers pamphlet to give to Carter, so I put on the front ‘To President Jimmy Carter from Tony Benn’ with a little note saying that this traced our common heritage from Amos to Micah through the English Revolution and the American War of Independence and so on. I scribbled on the back, ‘Sorry to have missed you and I have sent a message through your son.’
Had a mug of tea and some sandwiches on the train and arrived in Swindon just after 2. We marched through the town with the band, and I made a speech in the park. Afterwards I was driven to Reading, and then I came home, so exhausted that I couldn’t work, so I watched the Eurovision Song Contest and went to bed.
Monday 9 May
Arthur Hawkins from the CEGB came to say goodbye. I have had some tremendous clashes with him, he is such a difficult man, and I thought it would be rather a painful goodbye. I asked after his health, and then blow me down if he didn’t say how much he enjoyed an article on Father which I had written. He said Father was an old Victorian Nonconformist and that I was a chip off the old block. So that was a nice surprise.
Then he mentioned by name one civil servant in my department and suggested I get rid of him. He said that this man was disloyal to me and could not be trusted. ‘He said to me once, “Arthur, I would very much like a holiday. Can you arrange a trip?”’ Arthur said he wouldn’t do it. ‘You check the contracts he awards,’ he told me. It was really rather frightening but I didn’t pursue it further.
Sunday 15 May
I lay in bed till 12. There is a huge row about Peter Jay’s appointment as Ambassador to Washington. It will weaken Jim’s position on the direct elections issue and make it harder for him to sack me.
Monday 16 May
At last Thursday’s PLP, Jim had apparently threatened to resign if he didn’t get his way on Peter Jay. The fact that there is so much bitterness over this does suggest that Jim’s spell is broken now.
Later I had a deep discussion with Frances and Francis about the whole affair. Sir Peter Ramsbotham has made a skilful statement in Washington saying what a brilliant and imaginative choice Jay was, how the handover would be smooth and so on. It is ironic that Ramsbotham has come out of this so well while Jim has been made to look an absolute swine. As somebody said, why didn’t Jim just appoint Ramsbotham as Governor of Bermuda and then replace him with Jay, instead of the other way round?
Wednesday 18 May
I had a curious nightmare last night. I was standing by a deep concrete pit in a prison with a noose round my neck. I swayed over this pit, looking down and knowing that with the drop the rope would break my neck, and there was this tremendous compulsion to jump, but I didn’t. I woke up in a sweat and found it was 3.50. Perhaps it meant that I have managed to control my self-destructive urges; or maybe I was visualising in dramatic form the problems of resignation or dismissal from the Cabinet over direct elections.
Friday 20 May
I went straight to the House of Commons for a meeting of the GEN 74 Committee. We had a couple of papers before us: one on how we should handle the follow-up to the summit on proliferation, the other on the transportation of plutonium. On the latter, I asked three questions.
‘How is plutonium actually moved at the moment – is it by sea, land or air?’
I was told that it was moved by sea in steel canisters actually welded to the side of the ship, transported by land in this country, and that small quantities were moved by air.
‘What protection is given, particularly as it crosses from one country to another?’
‘We protect it till it passes out of our hands and then another country takes it in.’
‘What effective safeguards are there that the plutonium we send abroad, for fast-breeder reactors, research or whatever, is actually used for the purpose intended? For example, do the French account for the use they make of our plutonium?’
I was told that under the Euratom Treaty they didn’t.
I think I put my finger on three important questions that officials, technicians and scientists – but not Ministers – have considered.
Peter Shore mentioned the possibility of our dumping at sea and Fred Mulley talked about ‘silly pressure groups’.
Sunday 22 May
Melissa and I went to Hyde Park. It was a beautiful day and we walked for an hour. We paid 75p and took a boat out on the Serpentine. It was marvellous.
Monday 23 May
President Carter made a speech at a university yesterday declaring that American foreign policy was going to be reshaped on the basis that the Cold War was over. America, he said, was no longer prepared to support any dictatorship that called itself anti-Communist, because America was no longer frightened of Communism and wanted a new international system based on confidence and faith in free societies.
It was a most important statement. It goes far beyond anything Nixon has done and puts Mrs Thatcher completely out in the cold on rearmament.
In the afternoon I went over to Number 10 for a meeting with Jim that I had requested, and I stayed for forty minutes. He said, ‘How are you?’
‘I said, ‘I’m fine, very well indeed: I got up yesterday morning and went for a row on the Serpentine and a three-mile walk with my daughter. How do you feel, Jim?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You always look so cheerful.’
‘Under the surface it isn’t like that.’
I said I knew how he felt; I was the same. Then he half apologised for having been rough with me. I said, ‘Well, I much prefer working with you than with Harold – I must make that clear.’
He then asked if I wanted to talk about energy, and I replied, ‘No, I don’t want to bother you on that question, but can we talk about the political situation?’
‘Do you mind my writing this down?’ he asked.
‘Not at all. I won’t even say to you, “If you weren’t writing down so much you would listen to me”’ – which is what he had remarked to me in Cabinet.
He said, ‘Well, it is not for my memoirs.’
I went into the direct elections to the European Parliament. ‘You know my view, but I am not making a case on the grounds of personal passionate feeling; I am saying that you will split the Party on the vote, and you will split the Party in the direct elections themselves, and after all this pulling together to survive you will find that you have destroyed yourself when it comes to the General Election.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘I think you should defer the decision as long as possible, perhaps wait till Conference, and let the French take the brunt with the Germans.’
He was happy to postpone it till 1979 or 1980.
‘You know you have a much better chance of being Leader if we win than if we lose the Election. I am not saying you will be Leader, but I shall certainly give up a year after we win.’ I told him I didn’t believe that. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I shall certainly give up after a year and there will be a chance for you.’
‘Well, if we are defeated I won’t be there anyway. I shouldn’t bother about me. The PLP would not elect me as Leader, you know that. I am not going to ruin my life by worrying about that; I have got a different role.’
Thursday 26 May
At 9.30 we had the Cabinet committee which deals with Common Market issues (CQM), and pig-meat was on the agenda.
The Commission had appealed to the European Court to rule out of order the pig-meat subsidy that John Silkin had agreed, and the court had ordered that this subsidy cease forthwith. John Silkin reported that he had met Gundelach, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Fisheries, to try to get him to prolong the subsidy till 11 June to give time for it to be phased out.
Frank Judd intervened to say that Foreign Office advice was that ‘forthwith’ meant at once. The Attorney-General (Sam Silkin) thought it would be wiser to stop anyway now, because we had to challenge the court and if the court thought we had been dilatory in obeying their interim injunction it might dam
age our case.
I asked whether this was the first time that a European Court decision had been taken against the British Government, and I was told it was. Then I asked what would be the political effect of this on pig producers in the UK. John Silkin said it would mean in effect the destruction of our industry, the mass slaughtering of pigs and the abandonment of our processing plant in favour of the Danes. All in the name of free competition!
I just wanted to be told explicitly – as I was – that I was a member of the first British Government in history to be informed that it was behaving illegally by a court whose ruling you could not alter by changing the law in the House of Commons. That was an absolute turning point, and of course it could happen on grants, on oil policy, on intervention to support industries and so on. At a moment of great excitement, with the Tribune Group coming out against the Common Market and the direct elections brewing, here was an example of direct Community damage to a basic British interest.
Wednesday 8 June
At 9.30 we went off to Buckingham Palace. I suppose Caroline and I have been invited to evening parties there before, but we never actually went to one, though I have been to a garden party and to audiences of the Privy Council over the last thirteen years.
The Commonwealth Prime Ministers were there and we went into one of the reception rooms overlooking the garden, where we were offered drinks. I fell in with Paul Martin, the High Commissioner for Canada and a former Foreign Minister, who is always terribly friendly.
By this time we were beginning to string out and we formed a receiving line to be introduced to the Queen and the Duke. I gave an inclination of my head and shook the Duke’s hand.
We were ushered into another long chamber and there were the people who had had dinner – Prince Charles, Princess Anne, the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Margaret, Mountbatten and the whole royal family, along with Macmillan, Wilson and Home. We saw the Harts, the Booths, the Healeys and the Owens but I didn’t see any others.
