by Benn, Tony
I talked to David Owen there and he said, ‘I don’t take this very seriously. I think this is psychological warfare by Jim to get us all to pull together.’
I went back to Number 10 at about 11 and sat around with the rest of the Cabinet. Then I realised that Jim hadn’t arrived yet and I had a supreme opportunity. So I took my first movies and a few stills in the Cabinet Room.
It soon became dear that we were not going to meet again in Number 10, so we were all moved back to the House and finally began at 11.30. Jim opened by saying the most important thing was Party unity and that we must preserve our internationalism.
At one stage Jim had to leave because Mrs Thatcher had demanded an immediate statement about the bugging at Number 10. Jim said, ‘I don’t want any of you to come to the House – it will make it too big an event. I want to go in alone, deal with the question and leave.’
So the rest of us went over to Number 10 for drinks, and I had a word with David Owen and Merlyn Rees about the bugging. David controls MI6 and Merlyn MI5 and they both said, ‘We control the security services completely; the people at the top are very decent; you would be surprised about how good and decent they are. Some of them you would know, but of course you wouldn’t know what they did. It is quite untrue and Harold Wilson is absolutely paranoid.’
‘Of course,’ said Merlyn, ‘there is electronic surveillance at Number 10 but that is so nobody can get in.’
‘How did the story come out?’ I asked.
They said MI5 were angry that Harold Wilson appeared to be going to dinner parties, getting tight and telling people that MI5 had muddled up David Owen with Will Owen and Judith Hart with Mrs J. Tudor Hart. ‘It’s quite untrue,’ said David Owen. ‘They never muddled us up. They are getting back at him to frighten him by saying they bugged him.’
I said, ‘I hope you do keep them under control. I was at a dinner in 1971 when Harold told the CBI that the Government bugged the TUC.’
‘Oh,’ said Merlyn, striking his head with the palm of his hand, ‘how awful; he should never have said that’ – which indicated that Merlyn knew.
I went on, ‘Bryan Stanley told Ray Buckton in the 1972 strike that the ASLEF locomen were bugged.’
‘Well, it may be true that at some periods in industrial disputes that does happen,’ Merlyn replied.
‘Yes,’ said David, ‘I always thought during the seamen’s strike it was done.’
So I pursued it. ‘Take another case. When I wanted to appoint Jack Jones to the National Enterprise Board, I was told he was a security risk. When I asked to see the report they withdrew their objection. And in the Sunday Times the other day it said all the trade union leaders are bugged. You’ve got a lot of experience of it, Merlyn, you have been in Northern Ireland, where the situation is kept under very tight control. You must know how these things happen.’
‘Yes, I am sure I am told.’
David added, ‘I have been through it very carefully, and nothing would be done without my knowing.’
Of course I don’t believe that, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of mentioning my own experience to them.
Cabinet resumed at 2.45 in the PM’s room and we were told to limit ourselves to three minutes each. I said, ‘Here we are meeting to consider a paper by David Owen on the Common Market, yet we do not have before us the NEC documents which were cleared on Wednesday and on which they have worked for a year. We are not even considering what they said. Similarly, David Owen’s paper has not been made available to the NEC.’
Jim said, ‘Well, the Government must govern. I can’t have government papers put to the Executive.’
‘But, PM,’ I said, ‘when the 1972 Industry Group of sympathetic industrialists prepared a report on industrial strategy, you set up a Cabinet committee to look at it. Never in my whole life do I remember the Cabinet ever taking NEC documents seriously or setting up committees to look at them. They just don’t come to us.’
Jim, red-faced, pointed his finger at me. ‘You are working against us.’
‘That is a very serious thing to say. I have been in the Cabinet over many years and I don’t remember a Prime Minister ever saying such a thing to a Cabinet colleague. If you believe that is the case, you have the remedy in your own hands.’
‘Well, maybe I shall have to take the necessary action,’ Jim replied.
I said, ‘You have the power to decide who is in and out of your Cabinet and, I promise you, if I personally were your only problem, you wouldn’t have a problem.’
‘You are leading a faction against us,’ Jim retorted.
‘If you want my honest opinion, I am quite happy to go along with David Owen’s general approach, but I want to see this country restored to itself, with the right to govern itself by its own legislation. That is what I think is important. You hear all this about our parliamentary democracy being undermined by Marxists or by extending the public sector, but the plain truth is that it has been undermined by Brussels. It may take twenty years to do it but I want to work to restore to the British people the power to govern themselves and then to work for others.’
The tension was electric. Bill Rodgers said, ‘If others are going to speak on the Common Market question before Conference, then I am going to speak.’
‘We don’t want any more speeches,’ said Denis, and David Ennals wanted an assurance that everybody would shut up.
I came in again. ‘I remember well during the Referendum of 1975 that Shirley Williams said that if the vote went against the Market she would withdraw from public life.’
So Denis chimed in, ‘You promised to abide by the Referendum and you have broken your word.’
All of a sudden a wave of hatred engulfed the room. It turned into a personal clash between Jim and me with odd interruptions. Stan Orme interjected, ‘I won’t have Tony Benn pilloried in this way, he is quite entitled to his view’, and Michael Foot remarked, ‘Tony reflects a very important element in the Party’s thinking which has to be taken into account.’ It was an amazing scene.
Jim finally said, ‘I don’t know what Tony Benn intends to do. We’ve had no clear answer from him as to what he intends to do.’
Harold Lever said, ‘On the limitations of European legislation on the British Parliament, this situation is no different from the IMF or NATO or GATT.’
‘But it is different,’ I argued, ‘because those bodies do not have the power to change the laws of this country. I sat at a committee the other day with John Silkin when we were told that the Ministers were behaving illegally and that is a complete change. My advice, PM, because I don’t want a confrontation any more than you do, is to let the Party and the Government decide their respective views and then reach a compromise. If you force the NEC to climb down it will lead to a confrontation.’
Well, that was it, and the Cabinet adjourned. I had a word with Michael and Stan and John Silkin and they said, ‘For God’s sake, keep your mouth shut!’ We walked back and I told Stan that I was surprised more than angry, genuinely surprised, because I thought it had been a constructive meeting up until the row. I was a bit shaken, and David Owen said, ‘Well, you did go a bit too far, when you held the press conference on the Common Market Safeguards Committee.’
Saturday 30 July
To Bristol for my surgery, which lasted five and a half hours. There were complaints about Hell’s Angels; parents from a Catholic school whose headmaster had been suspended by the Avon Education Committee, who thought he was mad and wanted him to see a psychiatrist; an old man of eighty-two who took down his trousers and made me examine the shrapnel wound in his hip from 1916, and so on.
The news tonight reported that Harold Wilson has demanded an inquiry into Chapman Pincher’s statement that MI5 bugged Number 10. That means we are going to have a tremendous silly-season debate about something of crucial importance.
Sunday 31 July
In the afternoon Caroline and I went for a lovely three-mile walk right round Shepherd’s Bush and back.
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Monday 1 August
The story of the Wilson bugging was still running in the press. Chapman Pincher had commented that the security services were perfectly entitled to bug even a Prime Minister if they thought he was engaged in a Communist conspiracy. A most interesting admission.
Tuesday 2 August
This morning Frances Morrell rang to say that the Evening Standard had asked her which of my children was having treatment in the private wing of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. It turned out that in today’s first edition of The Times the diary column had contained a report to that effect and that we were using Caroline’s maiden name. I must say I blew my top.
I rang The Times, made them read me the first edition, and wrote it down. Then I wrote a letter after about a dozen drafts. Arthur Davidson, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers, assured me the report was defamatory, so I sent the letter round to the Editor and rang up to be sure it had arrived. Rees-Mogg came to the phone and said he would publish the letter and a retraction and apology tomorrow. I let it go at that, but, I must say, this really stirred me. It’s the third absolutely blatant lie this year.
Frances was most helpful. She’s at her best on these occasions and suggested I prepare a dossier and send it over to Stuart Weir, the deputy editor of New Society, who promised to do a piece on it. So this I did. It’s not possible to convey my anger adequately.
The Evening Standard and the Daily Express rang up during the day to ask if the story was true. I mustn’t get obsessive about the press, like Harold Wilson, or paranoid, saying Smear, Smear, because that’s destructive. But I won’t let them tell lies.
Anyway at 3.30 Dick Clements came over for a talk. He mentioned that the Tribune correspondent, on talking to one or two of the police at Grunwick, had received the impression that in arresting Scargill and Audrey Wise they were punishing the Labour Government for holding their pay back. That was an interesting story – quite a new dimension.
Wednesday 3 August
At 61 went to see the PM. While I was waiting outside, Beaumarchais, the French Ambassador, scurried out. I spent about an hour with Jim. He was red-faced – with embarrassment, I thought. I said, ‘It is very nice of you to see me. I felt somehow it had all gone wrong last Friday when we discussed the Common Market. I know you think of me as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but really I am Hyde, Hyde and Hyde again!’
‘But looking like Jekyll.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. I told him I didn’t think the Conference was going to be destructive; there was a way round.
So then he apologised. ‘Do you know, to be perfectly honest, I was very rude to you, and I think I was unfair. I told Ken Stowe at the end of the day that I had overdone it, and I worried about it all weekend.’
‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t apologise, you had a hell of a day. Anyway, I was a bit worried and I wanted to come along and have a word with you, motivated by the same spirit.’
So, like many rows with Jim, it blew up and blew over and blew out. And I am awfully glad I went to see him because he couldn’t have been nicer. I wanted to make peace with him and retreat a bit.
He said, ‘I thought you were really trying to wreck the whole Government and withdrawing as leader of the Left in order to take over.’
‘Look, it isn’t like that. I am trying to persuade people, and I think if we get the framework of the Conference right then we can have a meaningful debate.’
‘Of course,’ said Jim, ‘there are people on the Executive who just want to wreck the Government. I know there are.’ He does have an obsession about this but I didn’t pursue it.
I described the outline of what I would like to say about Europe. He said, ‘Well, if you were to admit that the debate isn’t an in––out debate, that would revolutionise the Conference.’ I said I’d think about it.
He was very friendly and I told him I much preferred dealing with him than with Harold. He half repeated the apology and I felt embarrassed. I did tell him that I was glad that none of that sensational Cabinet had appeared in the Sunday papers. I had quivered as I opened them.
‘Well, thanks for coming. I appreciate it very much.’ And on that note I left.
Tuesday 9 August
Spent the morning working on the false private medical treatment story. Dick Clements had sent me a copy of a franked postcard conveying the inaccurate Tunes story which had been sent to the Tribune office, and we also discovered that Labour Weekly had received one as well.
I could just see the number of the frank so I rang up the Post Office and, believe it or not, it turned out to be the European Movement frank. So it was from their office that these postcards had been sent, which may mean that they were the source of the story in the first place, though I can’t prove that.
Wednesday 10 August
Stansgate. Caroline went shopping. I had twelve hours in bed, which is my way of recovering. Later Caroline and I went for a jog in the lovely warm weather.
Monday 15 August
Damp, misty and sunless but quite warm. Red box arrived. Melissa wrote from Italy. Joshua rescued an injured baby rabbit and has put it in a box until it recovers.
Tuesday 16 August
Little bit of sunshine. Went shopping. The rabbit died.
Wednesday 17 August
Thunderstorm, and a really wet day. Red box arrived. Elvis Presley died.
Thursday 18 August
I should mention that over the last two weeks there have been clashes between the racialist National Front and the ultra-Left in Lewisham and Birmingham, and the papers have been in a frenzy. The press is doing its best to put all the blame for the violence on the ultra-Left and then use the National Front as an excuse for banning demonstrations.
Monday 3 October – Labour Party Conference, Brighton
Conference opened. Denis was called in the economy debate and spoke for ten minutes, then Barbara wound up. She may not be at the next Conference and won’t be in the next Parliament so it could be her last Conference speech. She was so keen and spoke skilfully, with passion and fire, but it didn’t lift the Conference – I don’t think anything could have done. Ted Castle is dying, I’m afraid – he looks terribly ill.
After lunch I dealt with the Chancellor’s dilemma. He was in effect saying that under capitalism you couldn’t do better than we had done. I argued that we needed structural change if we were to make progress.
But it didn’t come over well. I must record that Hilary was shocked, Stephen didn’t like it and Caroline was appalled, so I can’t pretend it was a success. The fact that Jim came up and said, ‘Congratulations, that was a real leadership speech’, didn’t exactly please me. I think the Left were very disappointed.
Friday 7 October
Last day of Conference. Apparently Edna Healey and Evelyn Jones had a discussion on Monday – which Caroline heard – over the fact that Jack Jones had criticised Labour Ministers for expensive living.
Although on the face of it Jim has got his way, in fact he has failed entirely to change the Executive. Radical motions were carried, and the vitality of the Party is phenomenal.
Sunday 9 October
There was an account in the papers of how Henry Ford agreed to Jim Callaghan’s request to site Ford’s engine plant at Bridgend, South Wales – which explains why the pay policy could not be applied to Ford.
Melissa and I went out for a two-hour walk and we had a lovely talk. She has terrific admiration for Caroline: Melissa is a serious feminist.
To the Harts’ for dinner with the Foots and the Booths. Judith described her meeting with the Cabinet Secretary, Sir John Hunt, held at Jim’s request, about the security services’ supposed confusion between her and Mrs J. Tudor Hart. Sir John Hunt confirmed that there had been a mix-up, and I said I didn’t think that likely because the security services did a very thorough job.
Michael said, ‘I sat with the Prime Minister when Judith was reappointed in March, and the security services did raise some objection.’
He said Jim was good on security matters; an inquiry into the Wilson bugging story would not be helpful, but Jim was not against a general look at the problem at an appropriate time.
After dinner we discussed pay policy and I said I thought that the proposed sanctions on firms to restrict wage rises were illegal, that they were acts of impropriety, that they were not effective or credible and would be politically dangerous.
Michael just blew his top and shouted, ‘You just want us to go back to inflation. Face the real problems – you have got to help the lower paid.’ He was red with anger.
Judith mentioned our industrial policy.
‘I’m not against that,’ said Michael. ‘That’s different.’
‘It isn’t different,’ I said. ‘If you want to get pay agreement and understanding about pay, you have got to implement the industrial policy.’
Jill rebuked Michael for being so excitable.
Monday 10 October
Reg Prentice had wide coverage for his attack on the Labour Party and his decision to cross the floor to the Tories.
Saturday 15 October
Mrs Thatcher’s speech at the Tory Conference yesterday was reported in the papers. She had attacked me, and others, for having attended a public school and said that it was the direct grant schools that had given people of her class an opportunity which they would not otherwise have had. It was a very subtle argument. She did well and encouraged the Conference, though the reality is that the Tories are deeply worried that they might not win the next Election.
Caroline’s birthday, and we had a lovely tea party at home.
Bing Crosby died today.
Tuesday 25 October
Luxembourg. The Research Council began at 10.15 and after long discussions Henri Simonet, the Belgian Foreign Minister, said, ‘I ask you to take note of the fact that there is a 5 to 2 preference for siting Jet at Culham, with two abstentions, one of which will rally to the majority. Accordingly the Jet site will be in Culham.’ So that was satisfying.
