The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990

by Benn, Tony

  Joshua phoned from the United States to say the Hyde Park reading of Spycatcher was front-page news there.

  The House of Lords announced their judgment on Spycatcher, and by 3 to 2 they voted to uphold the injunction. The lessons of Spycatcher are getting broader and broader – not only that there is secret material that Mrs Thatcher doesn’t want publicised but that the judges are tools of the Government. The BBC World Service can’t broadcast material that is broadcast by every other world broadcasting organisation.

  Friday 14 August

  Worked on letters. Listened to Danish radio, which had a programme, in Danish, on Spycatcher in which the extracts from it were in English, mostly the ones I had read in Hyde Park. I felt rather like someone in the French Resistance sitting in an attic with a radio.

  Saturday 29 August

  Chris Mullin’s wife Ngoc, whom he met two years ago in Vietnam, arrived from Saigon a few days ago, so I drove to his flat in Brixton Road to meet her. There had been television cameras at the airport when she arrived.

  Thursday 17 September

  The Liberal Assembly in Harrogate voted overwhelmingly to merge with that part of the SDP that wants to, and set up a new party. It is a historic moment, because the Liberal Party has been in existence for about 150 years, had a fine tradition of its own and is now throwing in its lot with people who don’t share its principles, approach or anything else. It is bound to fail. David Owen’s achievement is amazing. First of all, he tries to split the Labour Party and fails, then he splits the SDP, and now he has split the Liberal Party and persuaded them to go out of existence.

  Friday 2 October – Labour Party Conference, Brighton

  Heard Dennis Skinner deliver a brilliant speech on legal reform which brought everybody to their feet as always. He is an inspired man, extremely funny, very serious and absolutely to the point.

  Michael Meacher and I were asked to do a recorded interview for ‘Newsnight’, presented by Peter Snow who is the media leader of the SDP. For years ‘Newsnight’ has done nothing but show the Labour Party as unelectable, boost the Alliance and give David Owen lots of time. They had set up in one of the lobbies of the conference centre, and it turned out they had got together a film in which Martin Jacques, the Editor of Marxism Today, appeared. The last sentence in the little film was Martin saying that I personally was a spent force.

  So Peter Snow turned to me and asked, ‘Are you a spent force, as Martin Jacques says?’

  I said, ‘Martin Jacques is a Eurocommunist who believes in an alliance with the SDP.’

  ‘Will you answer the question?’ he demanded.

  I turned on him. I used some of the arguments I’ve just listed, and added, ‘If democracy ever dies in Britain, it will be because of you.’

  Around the studio set, with Michael Meacher sitting behind me, was a crowd of about fifty people – delegates, officials, security people and so on – and my attack on the BBC led to a great round of applause.

  So then Peter Snow turned to Michael Meacher, who said the Left was actually in charge of the Party (which was a load of old rubbish) and the policy reviews would be undertaken with balanced views, and so on.

  Then Snow came back to me. ‘Now, Mr Kinnock says that he is not going to let the tail wag the dog.’

  I said, ‘I’m not going to discuss Mr Kinnock. His own position is clear.’

  Then he asked, ‘What new ideas have come from the Left?’

  I replied, ‘All the ideas about non-alignment; that the Russian military threat is not true, that the Americans don’t speak for freedom and democracy, that Chernobyl shows that nuclear weapons don’t make you safe.’

  This threw him completely, and he went back to Michael Meacher. At one point I said to him, ‘Don’t act the part of God’, and everybody round burst into cheers. He had never had to do his interview in a public meeting before. It has always been in the safety of his own constituency, which is Lime Grove North!

  It was a marvellous little incident. Needless to say, they didn’t use the interview at all.

  Went back to the Conference and stood between Joan Maynard and Audrey Wise, both of whom had lost their seats on the NEC and were in tears. Audrey is an MP, so she is all right, but Joan has retired from Parliament and she is such a strong woman that it was very sad to see her upset.

  My thoughts on leaving the Conference are that the whole thing was a media show. Socialism was mentioned in every sentence, and then by nudges and winks from the platform the media were told, ‘Don’t worry, we don’t mean what we appear to mean.’ They were using that to imply that the Left were a ridiculous tiny minority against a socialist majority led by Kinnock.

  I don’t think we should contest the leadership, but John Prescott may put up against Hattersley and Michael Meacher may then throw his hat into the ring. I’m not getting mixed up in that.

  Friday 9 October

  The Tory Party Conference ended with an eleven-minute standing ovation for Mrs Thatcher, the singing of ‘Rule Britannia’, waving of flags and so on; yet, although they sound on the up and up, I think the base is not very secure, what with the poll tax, the attacks on the NHS and local government, and nuclear rearmament.

  Friday 16 October

  In the middle of the night we had the worst storm since 1703, with the wind speed in London reaching 94 mph. Trees were torn up all over the place. In Kew Gardens it will take 200 years for the trees that were lost to be replaced to maturity. The weather men never predicted it, though it was actually a hurricane. There are trees lying all over the streets. Caroline has been staying at Stansgate, where there was a power cut. Enormous damage has been done. The whole thing was unreal; it was like a day that didn’t exist, one of those days that has a special character of its own.

  Saturday 21 November

  Began packing for Russia. When you go to America you just take a toothbrush and know you can get anything you need there, but when you go to the Soviet Union you have to be self-contained. So I packed a kettle, batteries, cassettes, medicines and so on. The bag was so heavy that I couldn’t carry it, so I’ll have to unpack some of it.

  Monday 23 November – Trip to USSR

  Caught the 9.50 am flight to Moscow, where the temperature was – 18ºC.

  I waited two and a half hours for my bag, amidst people coming and going in fur hats. I could see a thin layer of snow outside, and as the snow fell it was quite romantic really, reminding me of some of the scenes from the film Reds. We discovered that my bag had been mistaken for that of the Kampuchean Ambassador, so we drove to the Kampuchean Embassy, where there were two officers standing in the courtyard. The officers accompanied us to the door, and one of them, wearing a blue overcoat and fur cap and belt and pistol, banged on the front door, which finally opened, and there inside was my bag. By this time it was four hours since I had landed.

  I was taken to the hotel and waited for one hour to register! There were twenty people waiting and only one woman, absolutely at her wits’ end, authorised to check people in. There were people arguing and shouting at her. It was clear they didn’t have enough rooms and they were offering middle-aged businessmen rooms to share, which they didn’t want. There was one plump blonde woman with a Swiss passport who spoke fluent Russian, and two men laughing because she was saying she didn’t want to share a room with them and two Germans. I tried to persuade the receptionist to take an interest in me by leaning over to point at my name on the computer printout, and she sort of smacked my hand! At nearly 9 o’clock I was given a bit of paper which I had to take to another desk to get the key for my room, which turned out to be a beautiful one overlooking the city.

  Had dinner downstairs in a fancy restaurant with several people from the Institute of International Relations and World Economy. What is so nice is that one can now talk absolutely openly to the Russians about anything – Stalin, Trotsky, the Cold War, the Labour Party – and there is no restraint. They couldn’t have been more friendly, though the Russian intelle
ctuals are a bit heavy.

  Tuesday 24 November

  Went to the Institute and gave my lecture. I had a lot of questions, such as what changes have occurred in the nature of the working class, and how do you deal with the problems of technological unemployment? If Mrs Thatcher claims to have helped capitalism, why has industrial production declined to the point at which Britain has now dropped below Italy from fifth to sixth place in the world production table? How would you define the difference between left and right? Even, what was the reaction to the Chesterfield Conference?

  At the end Professor Bolodyn, who is a great expert on perestroika and the economic situation, said, ‘Contrary to what you have suggested in your lecture, there is no danger of any breakdown of central planning. The danger is that Gosplan is trying to hold on to its real power. It still has powers to develop the five-year plan and decide economic rates of growth, and factories simply have to comply. Next year 60 per cent of the profits will come back in taxation.’ He added, ‘Socialist ownership will not be changed, of that I assure you.’

  After that, I talked to Igor Guriev, a deputy director of the Institute, and Professor Efim Khesin. Guriev said they were in a revolutionary situation in the Soviet Union. ‘If we do not succeed in changing our society soon, there will be a real and characteristically vigorous Russian response and opposition to the Government.’

  I asked if it would be violent, and he said, ‘I don’t know, but we are stagnating.’

  I put the point that bourgeois democracy allows you to change your management by elections without changing your system, and that could be applied to Communism.

  He said, ‘We are attempting that by allowing rival candidates to stand for office, but our situation is really urgent. Perestroika has produced nothing yet; we have only talked about it.’

  Listening to him, I thought the Soviet Communist Party seemed really frightened at the enormity of the crisis, with stagnation, shortages and poor quality leading to public anger and inertia. They are determined not to move towards capitalism, but they recognise that bureaucratic command Communism has not worked either. I think probably for them this is more important than disarmament. They want to reduce the burden of defence, but that is nothing like as important as getting their own economy going.

  When I asked if the changes in the Soviet Union would be like those in Poland, they thought probably not, because the opposition to the Government in Poland was highly organised. In the USSR it would be sporadic and unorganised. The nature of the USSR’s problems were to do with inefficiency and lack of democracy. They emphasised that there is no repression now and criticism is tolerated.

  Wednesday 25 November

  Went shopping, and I saw some cassettes of Russian music displayed in a shop. So I went in and asked for one, and was told they did sell them but they didn’t have any. Went to buy some food, and the shop had no bread or butter.

  Met Sacha to go back to the Institute to meet Alexander Kislov, a deputy director. The taxi we had ordered didn’t turn up, so we rang the Municipal Transport Service, which runs the transport for Moscow, and they said the taxi was there, but it wasn’t. So we caught an ordinary taxi, which broke down, and we hailed another one, which also broke down. I didn’t get a very favourable impression of Moscow transport.

  I was terribly depressed, and I thought to myself: How on earth can the Soviet Union get itself out of this mess? It is like an elephant with multiple sclerosis, huge but it can’t move. The Russians are a patient people, though slightly sad and resigned, and some of the young ones are cynical.

  I wondered whether there was any possibility of rival political groups being set up within the socialist system, but it was pointed out to me that there was no experience of bourgeois democracy before the revolution. There would be resistance from the Communist Party itself because the bureaucrats do not like being challenged. Then there is a danger of foreign interference; political groups would inevitably be financed and supported from outside with a view to destabilisation. Lastly, there might be nationalist pressure from the republics against the Soviet Union itself. They are absolutely right to talk about it openly, and Gorbachev’s speeches about perestroika and glasnost have encouraged discussion. But the remedy is really political rather than economic.

  When we arrived at the Institute I was taken to see Alexander Kislov whom I met at the Japan Peace Conference in 1983, and I had a long talk with him and two doctors. I came straight to the point. ‘I have some proposals. The first is a treaty of friendship.’

  Kislov said, ‘That is not realistic with the Thatcher Government.’

  I replied, ‘I know that very well. I don’t want to promote it if it wouldn’t be acceptable to the Soviet Government I don’t want to be repudiated in Moscow.’

  I asked about the speech by Boris Yeltsin which had led to his removal as Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party just before I arrived there, and they said it had not been published, but he had undoubtedly offended the bureaucracy.

  Later in the day I talked to Martin Walker, the Guardian correspondent, who told me that people he knew believed that Boris Yeltsin had not criticized Raisa Gorbachev (as some had said), but he had made a reference to the personality cult and had gone right over the top, accusing Ministries of inflated size. So he had been removed by the Moscow District Committee. Martin Walker said the hearings against him sounded like a witch-hunt or a denunciation.

  Thursday 26 November

  At 3.15 I went to the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences and was greeted by a man of about fifty, Leonid S. Yagodovsky. We were joined later by a specialist on East Germany.

  Yagodovsky repeated what I had heard elsewhere, that they must make greater use of the credit system. He said they have got to reduce state financing, and the state must earn its keep and use credit. ‘We need a flexible system of prices and incentives for workers. There will inevitably be greater inequality of incomes, and we need some form of market mechanism.’

  He went on, ‘Planning, decentralisation and self-management are the key to the new laws of state enterprise and industrial democracy which will come into force on 1 January 1988. There will be an Enterprise Council with the workers, the managers, the Party, the trade unions and the youth movements and they will adopt a plan of enterprise, not the Ministry.’

  I commented, ‘I find what you say about self-management very exciting, but when I say this in Britain they call me a Trotskyite.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Yagadovsky, ‘Trotsky’s concept was quite different. He believed the trade unions should be an instrument of state power, and actually Trotsky’s view was implemented by Stalin. Stalin was Trotsky in practice.’

  So I said, ‘You had better send us a lecturer on Trotsky to argue with Trotskyite parties!’

  He told me, ‘Trotsky claimed he was expelled because his ideas were rejected, but actually his ideas were implemented. But Trotsky said that the USSR could not build socialism in one country, wheras Stalin thought it could, and it was.’

  Friday 27 November

  Spent twelve hours in bed tossing and turning, and obviously had a fever. I woke feeling very unwell.

  Went out with a guide for sightseeing, but I had already seen Red Square and the various cathedrals. It was terribly cold, and I could feel this freezing air going into my chest Walked to the cemetery, and it was so icy that it was like walking on glass: I was terrified I was going to fall, so altogether I wasn’t in the happiest of moods. In the graveyard were statues of Pushkin and Khrushchev. Between coughing and walking and slipping on the ice, I managed to get a glimpse of them and other interesting ones.

  But the greatest point of interest was my conversation with my guide, Yuri, who said he wasn’t a member of the Party and didn’t have any interest in being a member of the Party: he was really a budding Russian entrepreneur.

  I asked about Boris Yeltsin, and he said there was certainly no glasnost about his dismissal. ‘It was the old-style removal of somebody who t
hreatened the bureaucracy. In fact, Yeltsin and Gorbachev were old friends, and Yeltsin was very go-ahead, but he had been frustrated and had previously offered to resign his job because he couldn’t make any progress. He did not attack Gorbachev or his wife, but he did make some reference to avoiding the cult of personality. Actually, the bureaucracy removed Yeltsin, but the public outcry at his removal was so great because he was a popular figure that he was reinstated as Deputy Construction Minister with the rank of Minister.’

  Had a farewell dinner with Alexander Kislov, Igor Guriev, Sacha, Professor Khesin and Sergei Peregudov, who is studying the Labour Left and asked me to send him some material.

  I asked them lots of questions, including the one often put to me: ‘Do the people of Russia really want perestroika?’

  Kislov replied, ‘I remember talking to a Saudi Arabian slave who had been liberated, and he said he was happier when he was a slave because people looked after him, and now he was on his own.’

  I drew a comparison between the Vatican and the Kremlin and said I thought they were similar in their structure.

  Guriev laughed. ‘You said it; I didn’t.’

  I asked about Khrushchev, and they said he lost a lot of support from the people and from the bureaucracy because he attacked Stalin, and the bureaucracy had worked with Stalin.

  I was told the other day that on the occasion in 1960 when Khrushchev hammered the UN rostrum with a shoe, somebody took a photograph of him and he was wearing both his shoes, so he had obviously brought a spare one in his bag.

  They told me that in 1985 Gorbachev had been elected as General Secretary of the party by only a one-vote majority, and one of the anti-Gorbachev members of the Politburo had been detained in America because of a problem with the plane; if he had got back in time, Gorbachev would not have won.

  They asked who the people were to watch on the Labour Left, apart from myself, Ken Livingstone and Joan Ruddock. I said, ‘Jeremy Corbyn, Dennis Skinner, Brian Sedgemore, Dawn Primarolo, Tony Banks, Harry Cohen and Bob Cryer.’