The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Also by Tony Benn

  Title Page

  Illustrations

  Brief Chronology

  Preface to the 2005 edition

  Foreword to the first edition

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: 1940–49

  Chapter 2: 1950–60

  Chapter 3: 1960–64

  Chapter 4: 1964–66

  Chapter 5: 1966–70

  Chapter 6: 1970–74

  Chapter 7: 1974–75

  Chapter 8: 1975–76

  Chapter 9: 1976–79

  Chapter 10: 1979–81

  Chapter 11: 1981–83

  Chapter 12: 1983–87

  Chapter 13: 1987–90

  Picture Section

  Principal Persons

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Tony Benn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1950 and retired in 2001 ‘to devote more time to politics’. He is the longest serving Labour MP of all time and has held senior Cabinet and party posts. He is now a visiting professor of government and politics at the LSE.

  He is the author of many books, including his powerful case for constitutional change, Common Sense (with Andrew Hood), Arguments for Socialism, Arguments for Democracy, nine volumes of diaries and Dare to be a Daniel, Benn’s memoir of childhood.

  Tony Benn has four children and ten grandchildren. He was married for 51 years to Caroline, socialist, teacher and author, who died in 2000.

  Ruth Winstone has edited all volumes of Tony Benn’s Diaries and several biographies of political figures. She is associate editor of the Times Guide to the House of Commons; and currently works as a Library Clerk in the Commons.

  Also by Tony Benn

  THE REGENERATION OF BRITAIN

  SPEECHES

  ARGUMENTS FOR SOCIALISM

  ARGUMENTS FOR DEMOCRACY

  PARLIAMENT, PEOPLE AND POWER

  TI IE SIZEWELL SYNDROME

  FIGHTING BACK: SPEAKING OUT FOR SOCIALISM IN THE EIGHTIES

  A FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM

  COMMON SENSE

  FREE RADICAL: NEW CENTURY ESSAYS

  YEARS OF HOPE: DIARIES, PAPERS AND LETTERS 1940–1962

  OUT OF THE WILDERNESS: Diaries 1963–1967

  OFFICE WITHOUT POWER: Diaries 1968–1972

  AGAINST THE TIDE: Diaries 1973–1976

  CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Diaries 1977–1980

  THE END OF AN ERA: Diaries 1980–1990

  FREE AT LAST!: Diaries 1991–2001

  DARE TO BE A DANIEL: Then and Now

  MORE TIME FOR POLITICS: Diaries 2001–2007

  The Benn Diaries

  Tony Benn

  Selected, Abridged and

  Introduced by

  Ruth Winstone

  Illustrations

  Clement Attlee The Hulton Deutsch

  Collection

  Franklin D. Roosevelt ”

  Nikita Khrushchev ”

  Jawarhalal Nehru ”

  Joshua, Melissa, Stephen & Hilary Benn ”

  Winston Churchill & Anthony Eden ”

  Harold Macmillan & Hugh Gaitskell ”

  By-election congratulations ”

  John F. Kennedy ”

  Lord Home ”

  Tony Benn with HM The Queen ”

  De Gaulle Daniel Angeli/Camera Press London

  Edward Heath The Hulton Deutsch Collection

  Tony Benn at the BBC Financial Times/Trevor Humphries

  Tony Benn & Harold Wilson Camera Press London

  Tony Benn with Old Bristolians Bristol United Press

  Margaret Thatcher The Hulton Deutsch Collection

  James Callaghan at Party Conference Lionel Cherruault/Camera Press

  Michael Foot with Tony Benn The Hulton Deutsch Collection

  Snookered in Chesterfield Srdja Djukanovic/Camera Press London

  Office politics – Tony Benn’s basement Caroline Rees

  Ronald Reagan The Hulton Deutsch Collection

  Nelson Mandela The Hulton Deutsch Collection/Reuters

  Neil Kinnock Srdja Djukanovic/Camera Press London

  Billy Bragg with Tony Benn Paul Slattery

  Mikhail Gorbachev with John Major The Hulton Deutsch Collection/Sportsphoto

  With Claire Rayner & Bill Owen Grimsby Evening Telegraph

  Line drawings: Vicky © Evening Standard; © Garland, New Statesman; Garland © Daily Telegraph; Franklin © The Times, The Sun; Cummings © Daily Express; © Steve Bell, Guardian

  Brief Chronology

  April 1940 Anthony Wedgwood Benn 15 years old.

  Dec 1941 William Wedgwood Benn MP is created a Labour peer, Lord Stansgate

  July 1943 Tony Benn joins RAF

  June 1944 Brother Michael killed in RAF

  July 1945 General Election. Clement Attlee PM

  Aug 1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

  Jan 1946 Tony Benn to New College, Oxford

  June 1949 Marriage to Caroline De Camp

  Nov 1949 Tony Benn becomes producer with BBC

  Feb 1950 General Election. Clement Attlee PM

  June 1950 Korean War

  30 Nov 1950 Tony Benn elected for Bristol South East in by-election

  Oct 1951 General Election. Winston Churchill PM

  Apr 1955 Churchill resigns. Anthony Eden PM

  Dec 1955 Gaitskell elected Leader of Labour Party

  June 1956 Nasser nationalises Suez Canal

  June–Nov 1956 Suez crisis

  Jan 1957 Eden resigns. Macmillan PM

  Oct 1959 General Election. Macmillan PM

  Nov 1959 Tony Benn elected to NEC

  Nov 1960 Father dies. Benn disqualified from Commons

  May 1961 By-election Bristol South East. Tony Benn re-elected but is refused admission to the Commons

  July 1961 Election Court unseats Tony Benn

  Jan 1963 Gaitskell dies. Harold Wilson Leader of Labour Party

  Jan 1963 Joint Select Committee recommends reform of peerage law

  July 1963 Peerage Act passed. Tony Benn renounces Stansgate peerage

  20 Aug 1963 By-election, Bristol South East. Tony Benn re-elected

  Oct 1964 General Election. Wilson PM. Tony Benn Postmaster General

  Jan 1965 Winston Churchill dies

  March 1966 General Election. Harold Wilson PM

  June 1966 Tony Benn Minister of Technology

  June 1970 General Election. Edward Heath PM

  1971/1972 Tony Benn Chairman of Labour Party

  Nov 1971 Tony Benn contests deputy leadership of Labour Party

  Feb 1974 General Election. Harold Wilson PM. Tony Benn appointed Secretary of State for Industry

  Oct 1974 General Election. Harold Wilson PM

  Feb 1975 Margaret Thatcher becomes Leader of Conservative Party

  June 1975 Common Market Referendum. Tony Benn moved from Department of Industry to Energy

  March 1976 Harold Wilson resigns. Tony Benn contests leadership.

  James Callaghan PM

  Feb 1977 Anthony Crosland dies

  May 1979 General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM

  Nov 1980 Michael Foot elected Leader of Labour Party

  June 1981 Tony Benn in hospital with Guillain-Barre syndrome

  Sept 1981 Tony Benn contests deputy leadership of Labour Party

  Apr–June 1982 Falklands War

  June 1983 General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM

  Tony Benn loses in Bristol following Boundary Commission changes to constituencies

  Oct 1983 Neil Kinnock elected Leader of Labour Party

  March 1984 Tony Benn elected MP for Chesterfield
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  June 1987 General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM

  Oct 1988 Tony Benn contests leadership of Labour Party

  Nov 1990 Tony Benn visits President Saddam Hussain in Iraq

  Margaret Thatcher resigns. John Major PM

  Preface to the 2005 Edition

  Ten years have passed since this single volume edition of the diaries of Tony Benn was first published. Two further books have appeared: a memoir of Benn’s childhood, Dare to be a Daniel, and Free at Last!: 1990–2001, which records the last years of Tony Benn’s parliamentary career and his entry into a new phase of personal and public life. The very early years described in Daniel are crucial to an understanding of a politician raised between two World Wars in the political tradition of radical non-conformism and in the culture of successful British entrepreneurship. This single volume edition should be read in conjunction with those two to appreciate the depth and unprecedented scope of the Benn Diaries.

  By 2005, the year of publication of this book, the Labour Party had been in government for eight years consecutively, and for twenty-five of the preceding sixty years. But in the Election of May 2005, the proportion of the electorate voting for the government was the smallest in those sixty years. The distance the party has moved, and the bipartisanship of British political leaders at the beginning of the 21st century, has been meticulously chronicled by Tony Benn, himself a senior minister in the governments of the 1960s and 1970s, and an active participant in the Labour Party’s policy-making and organisational structures over the years. He thus also had a direct influence on the Party’s historic development, and witnessed the major ideological shifts which were accelerated in the 1990s under the banner of New Labour.

  Chronicling – and interpreting – political life at the macro and micro level is a challenge to any serious political diarist. Tony Benn kept a regular daily record both as a Cabinet minister at the centre of governmental power and as a constituency MP (first in Bristol, and then in Chesterfield) confronted with his constituents’ wide-ranging individual and personal problems. As a result, the 15-million word diaries and associated archives present a coherent history of the massive transformation in technology, power, international relations and the social face of Britain.

  This single volume edition will, I hope, reflect the essence of the five separate books from which it is distilled. I continue to believe, as I did ten years ago, that, in the long run, it will be the small details of political life in the 20th century, as well as the major historical events and characters, which will endure and interest future generations of readers.

  Ruth Winstone

  Editor

  June 2005

  Foreword to the First Edition

  My family have not only had to endure the burden of a politician as husband and father, but also a compulsive diarist. Over the years they have sustained, advised and encouraged me during the ups and downs of political life, and have borne the many real hardships that my life has imposed upon them. To Caroline, Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua I am eternally thankful.

  The main, huge task of transcription fell to Sheila Hubacher, my private secretary, who took it on with good humour and occasional frustration. Tony Whittome of Hutchinson has gently seen this and other volumes through from the start to finish. To both I am extremely grateful.

  The main credit for the Diaries must go to Ruth Winstone, the editor of the series over a decade, whose judgement, tenacity and skill have made their publication possible and who has selected and edited this volume with little or no help from me.

  Tony Benn

  July 1995

  Introduction

  One of the intriguing aspects of a diary is that it is impossible to predict what posterity will make of it. The fascination of Samuel Pepys’s diary, now over 300 years old, lies not in the political events, nor in the drama of the Great Fire rolling through London, but in the incidental insights that it gives. It is the labour trouble down at the docks, the types of river transport used, the difficulties Mrs Pepys is having with her servants, and the character of Pepys himself that make an impression in a diary that was written as a very matter-of-fact record of his daily activity.

  It is much too soon to know what the enduring interest and value of Tony Benn’s diary will be to future generations, though I am sure that the names of the great and the good sitting round the cabinet table will be forgotten long before the sit-in at UCS. But the process of selecting extracts for this abridgement, from diaries spanning fifty years, has forced me to think afresh about the outstanding features of the diaries and the diarist.

  There is no doubt that keeping a diary has been part of an obsession by Tony Benn with Time. Time is a currency to be spent not wasted, and as a youth he kept a time chart on which were marked the hours per day devoted to work, conversation, exercise, leisure and sleep, all of which had to equal 24. As a 35-year-old he drew up a forward diary-plan to the year 2025 (his 100th birthday); and as a Minister he recorded, usually at midnight, the day’s unfolding events. To waste time is unendurable, as the war-time diaries, written during periods of enforced idleness in the barracks, reflect.

  It is the compulsion to note down the minutiae of working life, in a daily audit of Time spent, that has often exasperated those who have typed and edited the diaries; but that process in the long-run has also established the authority and the credibility of the diaries. To have kept such a record for so long is a phenomenal achievement drawing on extraordinary energy and tenacity.

  Yet this self-imposed apparently puritanical regime is contrasted by a good temper, great sense of humour and quick wit which, according to Barbara Castle’s diaries, endeared ‘Wedgie’ to his colleagues, however infuriating he might otherwise have been.

  And how he did drive his colleagues to fury! The later diaries candidly reveal the battles, particularly with Labour leaders Wilson, Callaghan and Foot, who found themselves continually frustrated or irritated by Tony Benn’s dogged refusal as a Cabinet Minister and member of the National Executive to let rest uncomfortable issues about which he and others in the party felt strongly. Tony Benn’s courage in the face of adversity, if at times misplaced, is undeniable.

  Having worked on the diaries for many years, my impression of the political life that they chronicle is that the Labour Party (in power for only 17 of the past 50 years despite its great talents, commitment and organisation) contains inherent conflicts that prevent it from ever wielding power effectively or for long. These contradictions (sometimes known as ‘checks and balances’) have in practice meant that every Labour leader, from Attlee to Kinnock, has been caught between the interests of the parliamentary party (of ideologically diverse MPs), the National Executive representing the Conference, and a Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet appointed by the leader. Most of the rows (quickly forgotten) between Callaghan and Benn revolved around these irreconcilable differences. But ‘splits’ have riven the Labour Party in every decade since the war as this volume demonstrates.

  Attempts to change the party both by the left-wing in the 70s and 80s and the ‘modernisers’ in the 1950s and the Kinnock-Blair era have recognised this conundrum but have failed to resolve it, while supporters have got bored with the arguments and the language, and the original issues have got lost.

  Tony Blair, the eighth Labour leader since the war, has made the most dramatic leaps yet in repudiating the Party’s democratic infrastructure, and its ideology; it remains to be seen how successful his strategy will be in personal and political consequences.

  Alongside Tony Benn’s life-long fascination with the political process, he has maintained a vigorous scepticism of the current wisdom of the day, scepticism that continually pokes through the diary. It is well known that in December 1978, the ‘Winter of Discontent’, as it was popularly dubbed, was ‘caused’ by uncontrollable workers, and trade unions who refused to collect rubbish, bury the dead and were generally obnoxious. Yet since 1990, Denis Healey, the Chancellor from 1974–9, has publicly decl
ared that the policies adopted by the Labour Government after the IMF ‘crisis’ of 1976 (strict wage control, penalties against employers flouting it, and huge public expenditure cuts) were mistaken. They were, he said, based upon wrong Treasury figures, were unnecessary and were bound to lead to the crisis of 1978–79 as members of the workforce tried to maintain their living standards. A few lone voices, including Tony Benn’s, stood out against the measures and questioned the assumptions. Books and PhDs have been written about the crisis; it remains to be seen whether the history books put the record straight.

  Unlike the six volumes from which this abridgement is drawn, this book has dispensed with footnotes and chapter notes, and bridging passages have been kept to a minimum. It is not an academic text, or a history, and many characters appear fleetingly: to have attempted explanations would have spoiled the impressionistic nature of the work, in contrast to the detail of the earlier volumes.

  It has been a great privilege to edit The Benn Diaries. The frustration and exhaustion have been well rewarded. I’m sorry I shan’t be around in 2295 to re-assess them.

  Ruth Winstone

  Editor

  July 1995

  1

  1940–49

  IN MAY 1940 Tony Benn was still at school, his older brother Michael had joined the RAF and his younger brother David (nicknamed ‘The Proff’) was being taught at home, due to a childhood illness. Winston Churchill had by now, with the help of Lloyd George, replaced Neville Chamberlain as war-time Prime Minister; Clem Attlee was leader of the Labour Party in a coalition Government. At this stage also, William Wedgwood Benn, Tony Benn’s father, was Labour MP for Gorton, having until 1926 sat as a Liberal MP. He was shortly to be made a Labour peer, with the title Lord Stansgate, and thus his eldest son Michael would become heir to the title.

  In this first chapter, letters and other papers are included as well as early, episodic extracts from the diaries and journals of Tony Benn which only become continuous in 1963. From 1940 until 1950 Benn was continuously on the move, first as a wartime evacuee, then as a trainee pilot whose training took him to Southern Africa, and the Middle East, and after the war as a student at Oxford and in America. In family letters at this time Tony Benn is often called James.