by Benn, Tony
Denis Healey thought the constitutional priority was that we had a right and a duty to judge whether candidates were suitable. However, no investigation was needed.
Michael Foot spoke, and more or less reiterated what he had said earlier. We must give him some leverage because the SDP would use it nationally. ‘Many people within the Party on the left, right and centre were saying, “If you don’t speak out we will”, and, if I hadn’t, people would have said I was a coward. Tatchell will not withdraw, and therefore I shall take the matter to the NEC.’
He gave the game away when he said he was pressed by MPs – no doubt he felt that if he hadn’t acted they would have joined the SDP.
In the end, the substantive motion that we didn’t endorse Tatchell was carried by 12 to 7, and will go forward to NEC.
Thursday 10 December
Jim Callaghan has a centre-page spread in the Mirror arguing that Labour must expel Militant, prepare for a coalition with the SDP after the Election and consider proportional representation. So that’s Roy Jenkins, Jim and Ted Heath all contemplating a coalition; this is the beginning of the National Government which was a disaster in 1931 and will be this time. At least it’s out in the open now, contrary to what Foot and Healey say. I know that Healey’s research assistant told someone that you couldn’t attack the SDP because we will be in with them after the Election.
Friday 25 December
Christmas Day. Caroline had bronchitis and was very poorly. Josh got up, and we began with a row, because I went down to my basement and found the washing-machine was leaking and the floor was awash with water, with my papers on the floor.
Later Val rang to say that Mark Arnold-Foster had died at lunchtime.
Monday 28 December
Caroline a bit better and eating. She slept a bit. We are both very physically and mentally exhausted.
Thursday 31 December
Lovely sunny day. In the evening we set off for Stansgate, arrived just before midnight, and sat and talked as the year came to a close.
Politically it has been the most dramatic year of my life – the deputy leadership campaign. Was it right? It’s still arguable, but I think it was. It was also a year in which the Party became more politically educated than ever before, and a year in which the policies were agreed.
I became very ill with the Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it still affects me in that my legs are a bit wobbly and my fingers are not perfect. It will be two years before I am completely recovered.
Both of us were active politically. Caroline continued to work with the SEA and produced the Voluntary Schools Report, was involved with the TUC Education Alliance, with UNESCO, to which she was reappointed. She edited Socialism and Education and Comprehensive Education.
I think now – and my friends agree – that we should fight the General Election on a status quo agreement, whereby the policy is agreed, the constitutional changes are accepted, the Left holds off on further constitutional change, the purges are dropped, and the leadership is not challenged.
In early January 1982 a joint meeting of the National Executive and the PLP, and Trade Unionists for a Labour Victory (TULV) was held at the ASTMS country club at Bishops Stortford. Tony Benn circulated a paper ‘Working for Unity’, to the members of the NEC and to the trade union general secretaries, outlining the basis for a ‘truce’ within the Party. There was reached a tacit understanding that the next General Election could be fought under the existing leadership (ie Michael Foot and Denis Healey), with a manifesto based upon the 1981 Corference decisions, a moratorium on constitutional changes, and a halt to any purge of left individuals or groups.
As a result of the discussions over the two days, David Basnett was able to announce that ‘peace had broken out’ in the Labour Party, which was much trumpeted by the political commentators.
Sunday 10 January 1982
I had the first of my home meetings for some time with Norman Atkinson, Tony Banks, Vladi Derer, Jon Lansman, Ken Livingstone, Michael Meacher, Frances Morrell, Chris Mullin, Reg Race, Nigel Williamson, Audrey Wise and Valerie Wise.
There was a very good paper by Chris Mullin called ‘The Basis for a Truce’. We had a long discussion that went on till about 10.45.
Williamson said there was a fear on the left that there had been a sellout, and Frances agreed it was a big change.
Jon Lansman said the Left was at a low ebb now and therefore we wouldn’t lose by a truce – it was the best way to protect our gains.
Audrey Wise resented the idea of a deal or a truce and said we couldn’t be private in any sense; we had to activate the rank and file to defend its rights.
Monday 11 January
Bitterly cold. The country is under the worst conditions within living memory.
Monday 18 January
Travelled back from Bristol, and a message came from the drivers asking if I’d like to travel on the footplate. So I went along to their cabin and sat in a very comfortable chair and flew to Bath at about 90 miles an hour in this new 125, through the Brunel tunnel. I got out at Chippenham, went back to my compartment and worked on some papers.
Tuesday 2 February
I went to a press conference at the Commons to launch the report published today on the real cost of nuclear power. The conference was organised by the Committee for the Study of the Economics of Nuclear Electricity. It was packed with authors and scientists of nuclear power, like Colin Sweet, Professor J. Jeffrey, Edward Goldsmith and Sir Kelvin Spencer; David Penhaligon was in the chair. I sat at the back, but Kelvin Spencer kept insisting on bringing me in; I must say the old boy was marvellous. He said he had read all my books and asked me what was happening in the Labour Party now.
The meeting raised all the fundamental democratic questions about open government and information, chairmen of nationalised industries and the accountability problems of controlling technology.
Thursday 18 February
Home from an exhausting three-day trip to the United States. It was worthwhile – it is good to go to the US on occasions.
Reagan has made a tremendous impact on American politics. He is not quite like Mrs Thatcher, because he presides like a monarch over American society, whereas she is a leader and a teacher of a much more formidable kind. They have both won the battle of ideas, because the old New Dealers capitulated as the Old Left did in Britain, but in the course of fighting against that old decaying corporatist, liberal, capitalist structure a great generation of really tough people was bred, and they are now taking over and carrying through a counter-revolution. They are serious people to fight. We have to breed, by discussion and struggle, a group who are equally capable of doing what we want to do; the present leadership of the Democratic Party is no use at all. Edward Kennedy is a completely empty vessel who thinks of politics as a management job without any ideology.
America is very conscious of its fall in world power, and that is what makes it so very dangerous.
Tuesday 2 March
Norman Atkinson told me that Rupert Murdoch had had lunch with Mrs Thatcher no less than three times last week. He had heard that from Ian Gow, Mrs Thatcher’s PPS, and he had the impression that the Tories were panic-striken that The Times might come out for the SDP. So they were offering Murdoch all possible help in return for support for the Tory Party.
Monday 22 March
To London Airport to get the flight to Glasgow, and who should I see at the airport but David and Debbie Owen going to Hillhead to campaign in the by-election for Roy Jenkins, who is standing as the SDP–Liberal Alliance candidate. Then George Brown came in and headed for the bar. So sitting in the airport were three people who had been Cabinet Ministers together at different times, and two of them had defected and were going to speak for Roy Jenkins. Brown and Jenkins – two former Deputy Leaders of the Labour Party.
I was met at Glasgow and taken to the Hillhead Labour Party committee rooms, where I had a cup of tea and a bun. Then I was taken into a little room in an old Co-op
funeral parlour where the candidate, David Wiseman, and others were gathered – a panelled room where no doubt grieving Glaswegians were handed the bill for burying their relatives. Helen Liddell, the Secretary of the Scottish Council of the Labour Party, said they were frightened about my coming – Helen is very right-wing. They kept bringing up ‘extremism’ in the Party and said, ‘Your Marx Memorial Lecture didn’t help.’
I went to the meeting attended by 1,500–2,000 people. The SDP had put out a little red-baiting, McCarthyite-type leaflet referring to my lecture.
Thursday 25 March
Was picked up at 10.45 pm to go to the ITN studios to comment on Roy Jenkins’s victory in the by-election.
Thursday 1 April
Met Graham Allen, Bob Cryer and Willy McKelvey, and for forty minutes we cried in each other’s beer, because after Hillhead we are very depressed. The Party isn’t doing well, the Left has lost the impetus, and the Right hasn’t grasped it because they haven’t anything to offer, but they are benefiting from the defeat of the Labour Party.
Friday 2 April
Today the Argentinian Navy were sent to the Falkland Islands, thousands of troops appear to have landed and overwhelmed the British garrison of seventy marines and a population of 1,800. The Government’s defence policy has been completely shown up – not that I would favour sending the British forces in, because it’s a colony we grabbed years ago from somebody and we have no right to it; neither has Argentina, though it is closer to South America. Some 1,800 British settlers do not constitute a domestic population whose views can be taken seriously, or rather whose views can be allowed to lead us into war. But of course the real interest there is the oil. There is oil around the islands, and Caroline pointed out that we should lave done a deal years ago. Take the oil, divide it into two – say Argentina can have half the oil and overall theoretical sovereignty, while we would retain the administration and the population would be given shares in our oil. But that isn’t the way these things actually work.
We have the Polaris submarine and nuclear hardware but absolutely no capacity to fight a war at that range.
Saturday 3 April
My fifty-seventh birthday.
The Falkland Islands is the big news.
The House was in the grip of jingoism. John Silkin and John Nott made very poor speeches, Nott trying to turn it into a party attack, which didn’t go down very well. I came away full of gloom because it is obvious that a huge fleet of forty or so warships will set sail for the Falklands, arrive three weeks later, probably be attacked by the Argentinians, and then there will be a major battle. The Falklanders are in effect hostages, and I don’t think the US will support us, since the last thing they want is a big British fleet in the South Atlantic overturning the Argentinian dictatorship. And that’s what will happen, because General Galtieri, the Argentinian President who attacked the islands to divert attention from the fall in living standards in Argentina, could himself be deposed. The Americans don’t want that, since the whole of Latin America would be set ablaze. Very difficult.
Monday 5 April
To the Tribune Group to discuss the Falklands. Stuart Holland said the real interest was the £5 billion investment in Argentina, and Lord Carrington and other Ministers had resigned because they disagreed with Thatcher’s policy. He said there was high drama in the Tory Party about it.
Robin Cook pointed out that the Argentine Navy possessed British missiles and ships, and that nuclear weapons were useless. The Government had blundered, the position couldn’t be reversed, and the Falklanders wouldn’t want us back.
Mik said there was a danger of our being carried away. In the long term, was a Labour government committed to the return of the Falklands? A show of force was no use because we wouldn’t be able to hold it afterwards. We could sink the Argentine Navy, raze Buenos Aires, sign a death warrant for the Falklanders and alienate the world, or we could evacuate the islands, compensate the islanders and have the fleet on standby.
I believed that it was a complex question about the remnants of empire, that we had to be realistic and recognise that the islands were indefensible. As with Suez, we would find that the Americans didn’t support us in the end because they had great interests in Latin America. From their point of view the Anglo–American alliance was less important than their control over the whole of Latin America, and jingoism couldn’t help us. We should take a clear and united stand condemning the Argentine Government for their invasion, holding Her Majesty’s Government responsible for their failure to provide minimum military protection, believing that the prime concern of the Government should now be to secure the future of the Falklands under an administration that would safeguard their interests. We should decline to support the Government in its preparations for war against Argentina, a war which would cost many lives and threaten the life, safety and security of the Falklanders. We should urge the UN to take responsibility for seeking a settlement that would meet their needs, secured if necessary by the presence of a UN peacekeeping force while international negotiations took place.
Stan Orme agreed, arguing that we must fight Fascism and help the Argentine working class. A British presence may help to destabilise Argentina.
Afterwards I saw Norman St John Stevas in the corridor, and I asked him why Peter Carrington had resigned as Foreign Secretary today, together with all the Foreign Office Ministers. Did he think it was because Carrington didn’t agree with Mrs Thatcher’s policy? He said there could be a number of factors involved, but perhaps one of them was that he couldn’t stand ‘that woman’ a moment longer!
Thursday 8 April
Chris Mullin came for a talk from 11.30 till 3.30. He’s just been appointed Editor of Tribune to replace Dick Clements. Tribune has now admitted that circulation is down to 7,800; there are two months’ unpaid print bills, and the whole paper has just been killed by a completely weak political line. I think now we are going to see some big changes. We discussed various ideas and plans. The paper will have a cutting edge, and that’s important.
Monday 12 April
Easter Monday. The family watched Michael’s bathtime; he was lying kicking and smiling.
I had a temperature of 102 and went to bed later. Falklands still dominant but no shooting yet.
Thursday 15 April
Chris Mullin rang to tell me the Daily Star had a heading ‘Whose Side Are They On?’ with pictures of the ten of us opposed to the Task Force, implying our treachery. It is bound to happen; you couldn’t expect otherwise at this early stage of jingoistic fervour.
Friday 16 April
A very painful cough. My temperature was down to 94 degrees. Lay in bed all day – Falklands again dominating the news. Didn’t feel at all well.
Saturday 17 April
This morning Caroline took me to the doctor, who diagnosed viral pneumonia and put me on antibiotics and cough linctus. I felt very tired, and it was horrible to be stuck in my room on such a beautiful day.
Tuesday 20 April
The press covered my visit to the hospital, saying I was seriously ill. I feel a bit lonely at the moment.
Friday 23 April
Masses of letters pouring in about Argentina; the overwhelming majority in support of my position. There are a handful of really vulgar and abusive ones. I’m certain that a majority of the British people are against the war with Argentina but the media are preventing that view becoming apparent.
To Croydon for the funeral of Terry Parry, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades’ Union, a very popular man. A fireman picked me up and took me to the entrance of the crematorium, and the fire brigade was out in force – hundreds of them – as Terry’s body was carried on a fire engine covered with flowers and a Union Jack. Bill Jones, Walt Greendale, Moss Evans, Clive Jenkins, Len Murray, Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Gordon McLennan, Mick McGahey, Jimmy Milne, Enoch Humphreys, Ken Cameron, Jim Mortimer – the Labour Movement’s leaders were there in force.
The service, which was conduc
ted by Bruce Kent, was really moving. Bruce said he had never known Terry Parry, but Terry had requested that he conduct the service. Jack Jones made an excellent speech, Len Murray not such a good one. A friend sang ‘The Impossible Dream’, and I’m afraid I sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks.
Afterwards I talked to fire officers from all over the country. I was invited to go in their coach to Crystal Palace Football Club for a little party.
Wednesday 28 April
An exhausting day. I got another 400 letters today, making 2,500 this week. Overwhelmingly supportive – I suppose coming primarily from middle-class people. Some white feathers and vulgar abuse. The mail is the biggest I’ve ever had.
Tuesday 4 May
To the House and heard Thatcher at Prime Minster’s Questions. Tam Dalyell scored a direct hit by asking, ‘Did the Prime Minister herself, personally and explicitly, authorise the firing of the torpedoes on the General Belgrano?’ Thatcher said yes, in effect, she had the Task Force under political control.
Pym made a statement about his visit to the UN and looked uncomfortable, like Thatcher. I think they’re beginning to worry in the Cabinet because of public disgust at the loss of life on the Belgrano.
I was called by the Speaker at the very end of Pym’s interrogation, and I got in a pretty good point: ‘Had the Foreign Secretary’s attention been drawn to the fact that in the Sunday Times a public-opinion poll showed that 6 out of 10 people in Britain were not prepared to see one serviceman’s life, or a Falkland Islander’s life, put at risk, and that such a majority in Britain will not be rejoicing with the Prime Minister at the loss of life when the ship was torpedoed without a declaration of war well outside the Exclusion Zone? Will the Foreign Secretary take account of the desire for peace in Britain by agreeing to a ceasefire and to the transfer at once to the United Nations of sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and its administration pending a settlement under UN auspices?’
