by Benn, Tony
Looking back on it, I suppose I should have played my cards differently. If I had not stood down from the Shadow Cabinet after 1979, had played a less active part in the campaign to change the policy and to bring about the democratic changes, and had not stood for the deputy leadership, and if I’d gone to find a safe seat this year, I would have been in the running now. I may even have won. But history didn’t work out that way, and the price paid for playing it differently has been enormous in personal terms. I have lost successively my seat in the Shadow Cabinet, the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, the chairmanship of the Home Policy Committee last October after Conference and, this year, my seat in Parliament. Four major setbacks. But the reward is that the Party has, I think, been irreversibly shifted back towards socialism and is more democratic, and that is the most important thing of all.
We put Reg Race in the chair. Chris Mullin took some photographs and then we had a brief discussion on the campaign. I said I thought there should be no personal recriminations and we should look at the long-term developments we would need to bring about if we were going to secure a Labour victory next time on socialist policies.
Stuart Holland said, ‘We must try and get a by-election for Tony, by getting somebody to stand down.’
‘I don’t want to stop you, but I couldn’t possibly contemplate that,’ I replied.
Les Huckfield said, ‘Kinnock is the cause of our problems.’
Mandy Moore didn’t like the idea of Heffer. ‘He is in the old mould and is an abysmal choice for women. As for Kinnock, he seems ready to say anything to win. It will be tragic if we don’t put up a candidate.’
Reg Race declared, ‘I couldn’t vote for Kinnock; under him, we’ll have a witch-hunt, and he’ll try to reverse the democratic changes in the Party. He would appease the Right. We would lose if we supported him, and anyway he does not believe in the policy commitments. We can’t have him as Leader. Therefore we should run Eric Heffer, Jo Richardson or Michael Meacher. Really, Jo must do it.’
In effect, we decided that we hoped to persuade Michael Meacher to stand for the leadership or deputy leadership and that, if he stood for the leadership, Jo should stand for the deputy leadership.
Having sat and listened to all this, it seems to me inappropriate that I should be involved in this sort of discussion, particularly because it may be thought that I am trying to mastermind things outside Parliament. So I will keep up a good bilateral discussion with my friends, but I don’t want to be involved in the plotting and planning.
The effects of the Election come over me in waves. Many people will suffer terribly under the Tories and it is immensely distressing. It’s easy for us to sit round talking about what we should do, and overlook the fact that the inward-looking nature of the Party has done us down.
Monday 13 June
I ordered some stationery because I have been using House of Commons letter-heading for thirty-three years and I haven’t even got any with my name and address. The cost of stamps is astronomical; at this present rate, assuming I get 1,000 letters a week, it would cost £120 on stamps alone. I did enquire about my redundancy pay, and I think I get £14,000 tax-free, and a couple of months’ winding-up allowance. I’m keeping Julie on. I had a letter from Richard Gott of the Guardian inviting me to write a column every week, which will mean £175 a week coming in.
Wednesday 22 June
Went to the House for the first time since the Election feeling absolutely miserable. I never want to go near the place again but there are meetings to attend. I wasn’t sure that I could go in through the private entrance by Westminster Underground station, but the policeman gave me a wink and said it was OK. I saw a couple of journalists, and found it pretty painful. I was allowed into Room 8 for the Campaign Group, even though non-MPs usually have to wait for the MPs to arrive. I shouldn’t really feel embarrassed; after all, I fought a battle and was outvoted, and I don’t feel defeated. Probably the feeling today was rather like that of a man thrown from a horse deciding to get on the horse again immediately.
The new Campaign Group was well attended – Bob Clay, Martin Flannery, Dennis Skinner, Brian Sedgemore, Frank Cook, Dave Nellist, Mark Fisher (the son of ex-Tory MP Sir Nigel Fisher), Willy McKelvey, Stuart Holland, Joan Maynard, Jo Richardson, Kevin Barron (the miner from Rother Valley), Ron Brown from Leith, Jeremy Corbyn, Harry Cohen, Michael Meacher and so on.
Again, the discussion revolved around the leadership. When Kinnock’s name came up, Jeremy Corbyn said, ‘Well, Kinnock lost the deputy leadership for Tony in 1981 deliberately and specifically, and he was busy preparing himself for the leadership campaign during the General Election. There must be a left candidate. Heffer is a candidate, he is against the witch-hunt, and I think we should consider him.’
Monday 27 June
Had a talk with Caroline in the evening. We are both sort of decoupling from the old style of political work. I am disenchanted with the Labour Party, and she feels she’s getting nowhere with it.
Friday 1 July
Visited Bristol for a meeting at Baptist Central Hall; it gave me a very funny feeling. As I walked down the station approach, a man stopped me and said, ‘Aren’t you Mr Benn? I am so sorry . . .’ Then at the corner of Old Market and Temple Way a disabled newspaper seller came out of his kiosk saying, ‘I’ve followed you all through your career. I am sorry.’
I went into the Hall, a bit early, and sat down. A cleaner came in and asked, ‘Don’t I know you?’ I said, ‘You may have seen me.’ She asked, ‘Have you got a friend in Stoke Bishop?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Well, who are you then?’ I replied, ‘I’m Tony Benn.’ She said, ‘Are you sure you haven’t got a friend in Stoke Bishop?’ So it was a good corrective for any superstar delusions I might have!
Sunday 24 July
The Kinnock–Hattersley leadership race has become more interesting. There was a violent exchange between Hattersley and Foot at the PLP meeting on Thursday night; apparently the Right had tried to get the Shadow Cabinet to recommend to the PLP ‘one member one vote’ in reselection procedures. So, when it came up at the PLP, the Kinnockites had packed the meeting to secure its defeat, and Max Madden (the MP for Bradford South) had moved that it not be discussed. Michael Foot had abstained. Hattersley had been furious, shouting, ‘Where’s the bloody leadership now?’, and Michael Foot had allegedly replied, ‘Don’t ever speak to me again like that – I’ll skin you alive.’
Saturday 30 July
At 4.20 Caroline and I went to Bristol for the farewell social at Bristol Transport House, where 750 people turned up, including the BBC and HTV with lights and cameras which upset people, particularly Caroline. Herbert Rogers and Dawn spoke, and Caroline was given a leather bag made by Arnold Smith. Pam Tatlow presented me with a beautiful illuminated address, drawn by Hazel Gower, which was decorated with pictures of Mars Bars, cups of tea and Concorde – everything that reminded the members of me; and also the text of a miners’ hymn from the old days of the Bristol mines. We sang ‘We’ll eat pie in the sky by and by’ and then the ‘Internationale’. They played ‘The Red Flag’ as we walked out, and it was extremely moving. It’s hard to believe that thirty-three years are over, but I’m glad the party was left sufficiently late for people to have recovered from the immediate shock of the defeat.
Driving back to London after what was a moving and tender and lovely evening, I did feel that the work had to begin again. At a personal level, I’ll have no difficulty earning a living from media work, but talking about politics is not the same as being an active political figure; being engaged in the business of preparing to hold power is what provides you with a platform and gives greater meaning to what you’re saying.
Sunday 31 July – Trip to Japan
I caught the Japan Airlines flight at 2.30 and the plane flew to Tokyo over the North Pole. I read the various briefs I had had prepared for the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, including one on the General Council of Trade Unions (
Sohyo), which is a sort of progressive, democratic and vaguely socialist federation, the largest in Japan, supported by the Japanese Socialist Party. I also read about Gensuikyo, the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.
Monday 1 August
To the reception, where a lot of journalists wanted to interview me, and I did speak to many people, but my deafness is a real barrier at the moment and the Japanese accent is very hard to get used to.
In a way, Japan is rather like Britain – they are both islands, self-contained, inward-looking, conservative and hierarchical, facing the same economic pressures which are driving politics to the right.
Tuesday 2 August
I had a fascinating talk with Robert Alvarez, an American from the Environmental Policy Institute in Washington, who is in Japan. I asked him about the sale of British plutonium to the United States. He told me that it started in 1959 and went on until 1979, when it was probably terminated by President Carter. It was a barter agreement under which the United States supplied us with tritium and high-enriched uranium for nuclear-powered Polaris submarines in exchange for plutonium from our Magnox civil nuclear power stations for use in American nuclear weapons.
Alvarez said the Americans wanted the Magnox plutonium because it was purer than that from the PWR. He told me that in 1980 the supply resumed, partly to fend off criticisms of Carter by Reagan on the eve of the presidential election.
From 1966 to 1970 and from 1975 to 19791 was the Minister responsible for atomic energy, and I had absolutely no knowledge of this. Encouraged by my officials, I used to give talks on the uses of civil nuclear power, while all that time our civil power stations were supplying plutonium for American nuclear weapons. Recently Ross Hesketh of the CEGB made a statement in Britain in which he revealed this story, and he was promptly sacked by Sir Walter Marshall, Chairman of the CEGB – which has led to some argument in Britain.
Thursday 4 August
I was driven to see the Governor of Kanagawa, through these enormous industrial areas. It must be the greatest accumulation of industrialisation to be found almost anywhere in the world. It makes my heart bleed to think of all the previously productive areas in Britain which are now just decaying and declining.
Later I caught the flight to Hiroshima.
There I went to the meeting with the ‘Hibakusha’, as the victims of the actual bomb raids are called. An old lady, who said she was thirty-five in 1945, now seventy-three, was terribly badly injured and couldn’t stand upright. She was working near Hiroshima in August 1945, for the military, and had been 1.1 kilometres from the epicentre of the explosion. She had seen the flash. She had been trapped in wreckage, was unconscious for two days and had suffered blindness, loss of hair, bleeding gums, fever and diarrhoea, and loss of power in her fingers and toes. All her organs were affected. She said, ‘I try to lead a normal life. My father died of acute leukaemia in October 1945. I had breast and kidney cancer and operations for cataracts. My fingers and limbs still tremble. I can barely walk. And,’ she said very quietly, ‘I so much resent the production of nuclear weapons. Atomic bombs have made no positive contribution to the world. I am very old now, but I am still learning what we can do to help the world and I feel keenly that I must work for peace. I want to be of service and I hope to live to see peace established.’ It was very moving.
There are 370,000 Hibakusha left but there is a rapid death rate among them, particularly recently through cancer. Two-thirds of them die of cancer. In Japan the doctors don’t really reveal the cause of death. One man told me, ‘It is most important to record our experiences before we die. There are no social security payments for the survivors, and most are suffering from a disease known as “atomic bomb bura-bura”. The Government doesn’t recognise it. Of course, the American Government is really responsible, but the Japanese Government is too.’
A Russian delegate told the meeting that he had lost his family among the twenty million Russians killed in the war. The bomb, he said, was dropped by American imperialists. Fixing the responsibility for dropping the bomb is very important. I had always accepted the general explanation that it was done to hasten the end of the war, but actually the then US Secretary of Defense revealed that it was done to establish a strong position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union before the war ended.
I got back to the hotel at about 11.30 and dictated from my notes.
Friday 5 August
To the Peace Museum which was absolutely packed, and the exhibition moved me to tears. Children were handing out labels to the visitors saying ‘No more war’.
There was a huge model of Hiroshima just after the bomb was dropped showing absolute devastation except for a few buildings that survived. From the ceiling hung a black rod at the bottom of which was a red blob showing where the epicentre was. Next was a vivid scene of a life-size model of a woman with her hair standing on end, bleeding, with the skin burned off her and another woman with a burned child. Behind them was a massive backdrop of Hiroshima burning. There were samples of the girders which had melted and children’s little luncheon boxes containing food scorched by the bomb. There were some granite steps which had been outside a bank, with the permanent imprint of someone who had been sitting there when the bomb fell. It was terrifying. I wrote in the visitors’ book, ‘Every child in the world should see this museum.’
I had to go out to recover myself. No sane human being could possibly assent to the use of bombs 1,000 times as great as that. It cannot be right. There are some views you come to in life from which you can never be shaken, and nothing will ever shake me in the view that such a weapon cannot be used and therefore should not be built and must not be threatened. If it ever happens again, it will be the greatest crime in the whole of human history, because far more people will be killed.
Outside, in front of the car park, there was a disturbance involving some Fascists in blue overalls who were standing beside four vehicles displaying the old imperial Japanese flag. I took a few pictures. They were addressing us through loudspeakers, apparently saying that the future of Japan lies in nuclear energy, Japan must have nuclear weapons and Communism must be contained.
We went off to the atom bomb victims’ hospital where the Vice-Director ran through a description of the various injuries they deal with – burns, blast, radiation, cancer, leukaemia, kidney trouble, cataracts, cheloids, purple spots, lassitude. I asked about genetic effects, but he had no information on that. The hospital is run by the Red Cross and gets no government money.
Monday 8 August
Had breakfast with the Venerable Sato. Sato was pleased with the conference and said the media coverage had been excellent. I thanked him very much indeed for making it possible for me to visit Japan.
Looking back on the week, it certainly was an interesting experience. The peace movement has a life and vitality of its own and its leading figures know each other well through having met at previous conferences. During the years that they were working on peace problems, I was a Minister in a government that was building nuclear weapons and following international policies which the peace movement itself found anathema.
Viewed from such a distance, Britain appears as a primitive, aggressive, feudalistic colony of the United States, gradually being taken over by the EEC, the multinationals and the IMF.
Tuesday 6 September
Sally went into the West London Hospital and our second grandson, James, was born to her and Hilary early on Wednesday morning.
Sunday 25 September
The Mail on Sunday carried an interview with Neil Kinnock by Jilly Cooper, and it was worse than I had been warned to expect He was asked about various colleagues and came out with some astonishing remarks. He said Meacher was regarded as my vicar on earth – ‘He’s kind, scholarly and weak as hell’. He called me a spent force who ‘couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding’, and denied he had once said I was a blindworm trying to be an adder. This clever-clever Kinnock, who has been getting away with funny remarks
which endear him to the media, will find, as he approaches the leadership of the Party, that they give enormous offence. Apparently he rang Michael Meacher to apologise and said he had been misquoted. But he didn’t ring me! That type of approach to personal relations, combined with his general inadequacy, is not going to be good for him.
I am feeling a bit depressed at the moment. I think the real effect of losing my seat is apparent, and no doubt being out of the leadership election has caught up with me. It is a fact that I have lost a platform and an income, and have no absolute certainty that I will get back. Indeed, if I do get back, I fear it may be on the basis of a tremendous battle with Shirley Williams or someone put up to fight me. I do understand how unemployed people lose their sense of self-worth.
Wednesday 28 September
At the NEC I passed a handwritten letter to Neil Kinnock.
Dear Neil,
I understand that you were misquoted in the interview with you that appeared in the Mail on Sunday. May I take it that these misquotations also covered the comments you were reported to have made about me?
I attached a photocopy of the article, in which Jilly Cooper had asked if it was true that he had once described me as a blindworm trying to be an adder. The relevant paragraph read: ‘For a second Mr Kinnock flickered between discretion and the desire to be accredited with a wisecrack, then opted for the former, saying: “Attribute that to me and I’ll kill you.”’
I got a response later, as follows:
Dear Tony,
Many thanks. Yes, I was most certainly misquoted – misrepresented rather. In a statement I put out on Sunday, I said that my reference to you was in the context of the charges of extremism malevolently levelled at Tony Benn. My reference was entirely intended to dismiss those daft allegations and the quote should be in that context and should have said ‘wouldn’t’, not ‘couldn’t’ (knock the skin off a rice pudding).
