by Benn, Tony
Thursday 13 October
The injunctions against the Guardian and the Sunday Times on Spycatcher were lifted. The Government must have spent millions pursuing Peter Wright around the world. It is incredible that a man can confess to crimes against an elected government, yet all the British Government want to do is prevent him publishing it rather than investigate the charges.
The Law Lords compared Wright to Philby and stated that he owed ‘a lifelong obligation of confidentiality to the Crown’, a most extraordinary judgment I think this ought to be the subject of some parliamentary action.
The Thatcher years are coming to an end, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this time next year she was on her way out and some Baldwin-like figure was brought in (John Biffen or Sir Geoffrey Howe) to lower the temperature of debate.
Thursday 8 December
Following the horrific news of the earthquake in Armenia, the response of sympathy and understanding is amazing, with the Soviet Embassy open for gifts and messages.
Gorbachev’s unilateral announcement of cuts of half a million troops has put Russian diplomacy right at the top, has ended the Cold War at a stroke and may bring hope to millions. What is so absurd is that the British defence policy is based on building bombs which would create a tragedy ten times as great as the earthquake and we are pouring money in to help Armenia. It is totally contradictory. The Labour Party has absolutely failed to think anything out.
Caroline said disarmament will lead capitalism to collapse and could lead socialism to prosper, and I think she’s right.
Friday 22 December
There has been an awful air crash. A Pan-Am jumbo aircraft crashed at Lockerbie, near Dumfries in Scotland, killing everybody on board and about twenty-seven people on the ground. The plane came down on a petrol station and burst into flames. A most terrible tragedy, and of course people are worried about whether it was caused by a bomb.
Friday 6 January 1989
Today the UN Security Council discussed the US bombing of Libya over the Lockerbie disaster. The Americans were on the defensive because the Third World has joined almost unanimously in supporting President Qadhafi of Libya. The Americans now behave like cowboys fighting Indians: if you’re a Third World country, the Americans can just do what they like – they can invade you, shoot you, bomb you.
Sunday 29 January
In the evening Caroline and I went to a Socialist Conference fund-raising party in Highgate. About 150 people turned up, including Salman Rushdie, who made a little speech about the burning by Muslims of his new book, Satanic Verses, which he autographed and auctioned at the party.
Wednesday 15 February
At the Campaign Group we discussed Salman Rushdie and his Satantic Verses, Earlier this week Ayatollah Khomeini called for his execution and another mullah put a million pounds on his head. This has sent shockwaves through the British Muslim community.
Bernie Grant put forward a motion with Max Madden which proposed extending the blasphemy laws and called for a meeting with the Islamic Council. Bernie said that Rushdie knew what he was doing and that they’d cut off people’s hands for years in the Muslim world. He appeared to be criticising Rushdie.
Diane Abbott said this was a matter of principle. The Muslims were being misled, and she was opposed to censorship because minorities would suffer.
Alice Mahon said the zealots of Islam had persecuted women, and they went as far as stoning women who’d been raped. She had no sympathy for their case.
Audrey Wise said she hadn’t read the book but Rushdie was simply looking at the world with questioning eyes. Khomeini’s death threat encouraged racism. She had 6,000 Muslims in the constituency in Preston, and many had written to her asking for the book to be banned, but she had refused, and she had had no criticism of her response.
Mildred Gordon said all fundamentalists and all established Churches were enemies of the workers and the people. All religions were reactionary forces keeping the people down and denying the aspirations of working people. She opposed all blasphemy laws.
Bernie Grant kept interrupting, saying that the whites wanted to impose their values on the world. The House of Commons should not attack other cultures. He didn’t agree with the Muslims in Iran, but he supported their right to live their own lives. Burning books was not a big issue for blacks, he maintained.
Pat Wall said his constituency, Bradford North, had the second largest Muslim population but he couldn’t sign Max Madden’s motion. He read us a letter he was sending out, refusing to support the banning of the book. The real question was the power of the imams and the mullahs and the fundamentalists, and no socialist could support Khomeini. Class was the issue.
Bernie Grant asked why the Muslims should be insulted. They had nothing to live for but their faith, he said.
Eric Heffer thought the history of our own country and the banning of books should be warning enough. Tom Paine’s Rights of Man had been banned. Many Muslims hadn’t even read the book. He couldn’t agree to the burning of books, because that led to the burning of people.
We left it there, and it raised all sorts of questions.
Sunday 25 February
To an anti-poll tax public meeting in Sheffield, the first meeting at which I had spoken specifically on the poll tax, and it was clear that mobilisation against it had begun. There was a great deal of anger there, and the ultra-Left attacked people who said they would pay the poll tax and asked me if I intended to pay. I said it was easier for me because my poll tax was much less than my rates, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone else to pay the poll tax, since I thought that would just divide us.
Friday 7 April
Gorbachev had lunch today with the Queen at Windsor Castle, where she gave him some jewellery and an oil painting of a tsar. Gorbachev is going flat out to endear himself to the establishment in the West, and I suppose he’s gaining a worldwide reputation which he can use for domestic purposes in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile Boris Yeltsin is quoted as saying he is a tremendous fan of Mrs Thatcher; the praise heaped on Yeltsin is obviously being given because he is thought to be the man who might dismantle socialism.
Monday 8 May
I worked this morning on an alternative paper to ‘The Productive and Competitive Economy’, which we are discussing today at the special NEC on the policy reviews, together with ‘Economic Equality’ and ‘Consumers and the Community’.
The TV cameras were at Transport House, and I complained to Larry Whitty about Mandelson, who was telling them who and who not to film.
Ken Livingstone, Hannah Sell, the Young Socialist on the NEC, Dennis Skinner and I voted pretty well together.
Gould introduced ‘The Productive and Competitive Economy’. When he finished, I said it reminded me of 1931, when Ramsay MacDonald had said that what he recommended went against everything the Party stood for but it was necessary. The trouble with the document was that it contained no analysis, no history, nothing about the power of capital or the impact of the EEC, nothing about the fact that technology gave you a choice, nothing about post-Fordism, nothing about public assets, nothing about the problems that would face an incoming Labour government I submitted my alternative draft.
Ken Livingstone agreed about the weakness of analysis. He talked about the balance of payments and moved two amendments, one to cut the defence burden and the second to control the export of capital.
Kinnock said there was no need for a historical analysis; it would daunt us. We lived in a capitalist world and we must accept the limitations of capitalism and control technology; unless we could win we couldn’t tackle these problems. He said that my proposals were a detachment from reality because there was no easy way. The British public did believe in the market and we had to face that fact.
On cost, he said Ken had helped our enemies by drawing attention to the fact that we couldn’t afford our policies. We must build the basis for sustainable growth and we must not promise to spend what we hadn’t got. We must create growth and distrib
ute it more fairly – shopping-list socialism was dreaming, and we should leave dreams to others.
Then ‘Economic Equality’ was introduced by John Smith and Diana Jeuda. I moved that we remove the 50 per cent upper-limit tax pledge. That was defeated.
We adjourned and had a quick meal, then came back to the NEC at 7 for ‘Consumers and the Community’. I suggested we change it to ‘Citizens and the Community’ – that wasn’t accepted.
The atmosphere at the meeting was quite friendly. Four of us, Ken, Dennis, Hannah Sell and I, stuck firm. It is a major change, and by far the most right-wing policy during my time in the Party. Kinnock is openly arguing for capitalism, and the rest are accepting that Thatcher has won the argument but her government might be replaced. I was as cheerful as I could be, and there was no hostility because the majority against was so enormous. As Peter Jenkins said on the news, Kinnock needs a fight to show there has been a change.
Looking back on it, I must recognise that the Labour Party has never been a socialist party, it has never wanted social transformation, it has always had a right-wing leader, it has always wanted to pursue these policies, and it is only when circumstances require a change that the pressure comes from underneath for a transformation. When we win the Election, there will be high expectations and enormous pressure on us, and it is an inadequate economic policy for that situation.
Tuesday 9 May
To Transport House early in order to be able to give a long press interview before I went into the Executive for the second day on policy reviews.
At 10.07 we began work on ‘Democracy, the Individual and the Community’. I had put in an alternative paper, and I moved the two amendments at the beginning of my paper – that we remove US bases and take back control from the EEC. They were both defeated by 19 to 3.
We came to the paper called ‘Britain in the World’ – a defence policy for Britain, presented by Gerald Kaufman. I argued that this really was reiterating Gaitskell’s speech in 1960 – fight, fight and fight again. After Chernobyl it was clear that nuclear weapons were unusable. But the PLP had never put forward Conference policy on unilateralism, and, if you looked at the history, Labour governments had in fact been associated with unilateral nuclear rearmament. Attlee built the bomb, Chevaline was endorsed by Callaghan, and now we were coming along .with Trident, which would multiply our nuclear capacity ninefold.
Kinnock said we were not interested in the history of Attlee, Bevin or Gaitskell. This document was put forward in the interests of the British people. He declared, ‘I have been to the White House, I have been to the Kremlin and to the Elysée arguing for unilateral disarmament. They couldn’t comprehend the idea of giving up weapons with nothing in return – they couldn’t understand “something for nothing”. We cannot sustain the argument for unilateralism. Tony says the debate is unrealistic, but patriotism and common sense tell us that there is nothing incompatible between unilateralism and multilateralism. Realism is the greatest weapon in my argument. I have ambitions for a non-nuclear world, and we can get public support for Labour and win the Election; the choice is disarming under Labour or having a Tory government that rearms. We want partners in negotiation and we must get to power.’
The Right clapped him, and that was the first and only applause of the whole two days.
I suppose I ought to put my reflections down. It was a remarkable two days. The NEC has abandoned socialist aspirations and any idea of transforming society; it has accepted the main principles not only of capitalism but of Thatcherism, and it thinks that now the Party has a chance of winning office.
On peace, we have abandoned unilateralism and, however we dress it up, we are going to keep the bomb. That is catastrophic, because lots of people are just not going to support Labour – they’ll vote Green or something. I think the Labour Party may be in a state of terminal decline.
That doesn’t mean I want to join another party or set one up. I don’t want the Labour Party to lose, but I want people to understand clearly what is really happening, otherwise they are going to waste their time, they’ll be cynical, frustrated, and so on.
That’s my work from now until the end of my life.
Wednesday 31 May
I went to Chesterfield Royal Hospital with Tom and Margaret, and we were taken round by the unit manager, who, of course, is a chartered accountant. It is a beautiful hospital. When we came to the premature baby unit, she dropped her voice and said, ‘Mr Benn, this is the most expensive end of the business.’ I thought, ‘God! If premature babies are uneconomic units, where the hell are we?’
Tuesday 15 August
Went to St Thomas’s Hospital, where Mother had been taken by ambulance after a fall. She was in a poor way. Her face was vacant, her skin was white and her wig was at an angle. I talked to Dr Norman Jones, the consultant, who said she had a touch of pneumonia, and it is a high-risk situation for the next four or five days.
Wednesday 16 August
I went off to the hospital at 11 and Mother was still looking very poorly. She cried and said, ‘My time has come. What is there to live for? I’ve lived long enough. I am ninety-two. There is no point in going on. I have nothing to look forward to.’ It made me cry too.
I decided I must try to cheer her up, so I said, ‘You’ve got a new great-grandchild due next month, Stephen and Nita’s baby. You’ve got your eye operation on 11 September and then you’ve got your book to finish.’
She slowly came round. We talked about the old days and about her parents, and how her father, D.T. Holmes, had been one of three survivors out of eight children. Then Joshua arrived, and she had lunch and began to perk up. She looked out of the window at Big Ben across the river.
Sunday 1 October – Labour Party Conference, Brighton
To the Conference NEC, where we spent about an hour organising our responses to the Conference resolutions.
What was clear to me was that Kinnock apparently did not want us to be committed to anything, even to the rundown of nuclear power within fifteen years. He was just convinced that we have got to get power first. Still, we’ve got a 10 per cent lead, and the press is giving him smashing support.
One of the most interesting discussions was on proportional representation, which is supported by Robin Cook, Ken Livingstone, John Evans and Clare Short. Hattersley, Kinnock, Gould, Beckett and I spoke against it. In the end there was a vote, with 23 to 4 against even having an NEC inquiry into it.
Wednesday 4 October
Stephen and Nita had their first baby – Emily, born by Caesarian section at 2.59 pm.
Friday 6 October
Geoffrey Parkhouse from the Glasgow Herald gave the traditional vote of thanks to Conference on behalf of the press, and referred to the fact that during the debate on labour relations Emily Benn had been born, and he looked forward to hearing her views on her grandfather in years to come. There was a lot of laughter at that.
At the end we sang ‘The Red Flag’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and this new song ‘Meet the Challenge, Make the Change’. Neil and Glenys stood carrying a little baby, and members of the staff of Walworth Road threw roses at the audience. It was just like an American convention. The Conference has been disastrous for the Left.
Cleared up and drove to May Day Hospital, Croydon, where I saw Emily.
Thursday 26 October
It was announced on the 6 o’clock news that Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had resigned because he was not prepared to work with Thatcher’s economic adviser, Professor Alan Walters. Well, earlier this afternoon the Prime Minister had announced that she had full confidence in Lawson, although it became clear that she knew of his decision to resign before she made that declaration. So when Geoffrey Howe, standing in for her, made a statement later I got in a question, saying that, in view of the fact that the Prime Minister knew that the Chancellor had resigned before she made her statement, she had misled the House. As she is first Lord of the Treasury, she ought to take responsibility for her
actions.
For the first time for a long time, our people cheered at my question. It is an enormous political event, and everyone was gossiping in the lobbies. Then we heard that Professor Alan Walters had himself resigned – not that that makes much difference, because he can still feed his advice through to her privately. But it was seen as another massive blunder by Thatcher. She lost Heseltine and Brittan over Westland. I think the fact is that the economy is in a real mess, and Nigel Lawson is happy to get out in good time. Secondly, the British Establishment want to get Britain into the European Monetary System, and therefore they want to discredit the Prime Minister, who is opposed.
Friday 10 November
Out of the blue, and quite amazingly, the Berlin Wall is being removed. The Brandenburg Gate was opened yesterday, and today bulldozers and cranes went in and began hammering holes in the wall and thousands of East Germans are coming over into the West. But in reality it is causing enormous anxiety in NATO because the whole defence argument has changed, while the Labour Party continues to call for three Trident submarines as a first priority. So it is an extremely important event, and very moving.
Wednesday 15 November
I was picked up by car and taken to a studio for a programme called ‘Head On’, done ‘down the line’ from Glasgow. Richard Shepherd, the Tory MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, also took part at my suggestion. He is such a sensible person, and we were able to have a serious discussion.
After it was over, Richard and I fell to talking. He thinks there could well be a ‘stalking horse’ against Thatcher this winter. He said, ‘It would be better to have a centre-right figure than a wet.’ He thought a lot of people would abstain and, if there was a poor result, Norman Tebbit would go to Mrs Thatcher and tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘Time to go.’
Tuesday 5 December
In the House, I heard that the Tory MP Sir Anthony Meyer, who decided to stand against Mrs Thatcher for the Tory leadership, received 33 votes. It has obviously shaken the Prime Minister a bit more than she would like.
