The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 Read online

  Monday 13 May

  This evening went to St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, for a meeting of the Christian Agnostics to hear the Bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, talking about his book Honest to God, which we had gathered to discuss. The Reverend Joseph McCulloch has organised this group, justifying its name by reference to the line (from Oranges and Lemons) which runs: ‘I do not know – says the great bell of Bow’.

  At this gathering were Canon John Collins of St Paul’s Cathedral, Father Corbishley (a Jesuit writer), George Dickson (an industrialist), Duncan Fairn (who took the chair), Gerald Gardiner, Dr Graham Howe (the humanist psychiatrist), the Earl of Longford, Canon and Mrs Milford, Mrs J.B. Priestley and a number of others.

  The Bishop opened by saying that secularism was not basically anti-Christian and that Christians must understand and even welcome the revolt against dualistic supernaturalism, the mythological view of the world and the religiosity of the Church. He said his book was designed to help those who were in revolt to see the basic validity of the Christian message.

  Canon Collins asked whether Christ was perfect, for if he was he was then God. Woolwich replied that he wanted to write a book about Christ and that the Virgin birth made Christ seem unreal. Woolwich’s interest in Christ lay in his normality, not his abnormality. He felt he could not make sweeping statements about Christ’s moral life, for what was significant was his obedience. Collins replied that if you simply say Christ was ‘the best man I know’, Christianity could never get started.

  We broke up for supper and resumed for another hour and a half. Later we had a much deeper discussion about the supernatural in which I had a long confrontation with Corbishley about whether the evidence for the supernatural came really from external manifestations or the discovery of hidden depths. Corbishley was splendidly Jesuitical in saying that you had to have mythology ‘to get people to pray’. Here is the real nub of the question. Is prayer a duty or a need?

  I attacked the double standards by which the in-group of Christians know that the mythology is bunk but they don’t discuss it publicly for fear of offending the faithful. Moreover, if the maintenance of the idea of the supernatural is justified on the grounds of practical necessity, it must be judged by results. And by results it has failed to stem the rising tide of secularism.

  Woolwich summed up briefly. He is really an academic with guts but he is coming under such heavy fire now that I wonder if he can stand up to the pressure. The Anglican hierarchy is beginning to sense that his vibrations may start an avalanche and ruin its plans for Christian unity. But then unity on those terms is death. I hope he has the courage to go on and see it through. Honest to God is certainly the most helpful Christian theology that I’ve ever come across and I’m sure millions of others feel the same.

  Friday 17 May

  Had to catch the night sleeper back from Teignmouth to London and got to Exeter station at 10.30 with three and a quarter hours to wait. The refreshment bar was closed of course. The waiting room was bare with a few hard-backed chairs, so I blew up a beach mattress, had a cup of tea from my thermos, set my alarm, stuffed the earpiece of my transistor under my pillow and went to sleep.

  The alarm went off at 1.30 and I found the room full of football fans who had been eyeing me as if I was a drunk, or a crank, or both. The train was on time and I got to sleep quickly.

  Saturday 18 May

  Home at 8 am and off at 9.30 to Yarmouth for a Festival of Labour rally. It was so cold on the pier that the band was playing with literally nobody in sight. However, about a thousand people turned up for the meeting inside. I travelled back with Harold Campbell, the new Secretary of the Co-operative Party, and he explained to me the inside story of the London Co-op row in which John Stonehouse, a former director of the Co-op, has become involved. It is a complicated story but John doesn’t come out of it very well. Also heard from him what a difference it had made to Labour’s relations with the Co-op to have Harold Wilson in the job. Wherever you look his touch is evident.

  Friday 24 May

  This evening Caroline and I went to Mervyn Stockwood’s fiftieth birthday party at Bishop’s House in Tooting Bec. His chaplain, Mr Mayne, had organised it and it was a very amusing do. He called Mervyn ‘My Lord’, which was slightly overdone. Mervyn was wearing a huge purple cassock with a clanking pectoral cross.

  The first people we met were the Attlees. Clem was sitting in the garden in an overcoat, looking terribly frail. He said my battle was a historic achievement and I thanked him for his support from the beginning.

  Vi Attlee said what a great failure Herbert Morrison had been as Foreign Secretary – ‘he just didn’t understand it’.

  Mervyn introduced the Archbishop of Canterbury to us at the end – the first time I have met him. He is a mountain of a man and so plump and smooth that he looks like some medieval prince of the Church. I thanked him for his kindly reference to my case and said I had never had any sort of Archiepiscopal blessing for anything else I had ever done. Ramsey gave a watery smile and indeed looked at Mervyn most of the time he was talking to me. He said that he had made five speeches in the House of Lords this year, two of them right, and three of them left. A very silly comment. Alas he is only fifty-seven though he looks seventy – so we shall probably have him for the next twenty-five years.

  I also met a man called Oliver Cutts, the son of a costermonger who bought a lorry in 1946 and I imagine is now a millionaire who owns a chain of filling stations, a road haulage fleet and a great deal of land. He retained all his Cockney charm and obviously was a man of great drive. He’s a friend of Bob Mellish’s and shocked me by saying he hoped Bob would one day be Sir Robert Mellish, Bart, in view of his services to the Queen and Empire.

  I said I very much hoped no such thing would happen and that Bob had been serving the people of Bermondsey and not the Queen and Empire at all. Here was a guy who left school at nine, licked the Establishment, and got to the top, and was now yearning to be a part of that Establishment. If politics is only about who is to get peerages and honours – our chaps or their chaps – then I’m not very interested in it. But I liked him all the same.

  We went from there to Elwyn Jones’s flat in Gray’s Inn Square where he and Polly Binder live. He is a dear man and she is a tough and delightful woman. They had some Chinese author there and a few others. Elwyn is working with Gerald Gardiner on a book on law reform to be published soon. Apparently they have a scheme for appointing a vice-chancellor who would sit in the Commons as Minister of Justice responsible for legal reform. I hope they are getting this all through to Harold Wilson. If we are going to do the job that has to be done quickly, everybody must be ready to carry through some pretty fundamental changes as soon as we get into office.

  Wednesday 5 June

  This afternoon Profumo wrote to the PM, admitted that he lied in his personal statement to the House of Commons, and resigned. The BBC asked me to do a discussion about the political implications of this in their 10 o’clock programme but I refused. I can’t think that the Opposition rubbing its hands in glee can do anything but political harm. It’s a bit like wrestling with a chimney sweep.

  This evening Caroline went to dinner with Lois and Edward Sieff and there she met a man called David Pelham who is making a film of Christine Keeler’s life. She had a long talk with him and he said that Christine Keeler was absolutely determined to bring the Government down. She was ‘a woman scorned’ and felt bitter about being dropped by the top people. It is all a very murky world.

  Thursday 13 June

  I had to go to Leeds to speak for Merlyn Rees, who is fighting Hugh Gaitskell’s old seat. The political situation is fantastic at the moment with the Cabinet deadlock and rumours rife that there are more scandals to come, and that Enoch Powell will resign. The Times is now leading a campaign to get rid of Macmillan and there is a real possibility of so many abstentions on Monday that the Government might fall.

  The PM himself is almost bound to have to go. If
I were a Tory I should insist on this just out of an instinct for survival. But they are such sheep that I do not expect a revolt and if Mac can go on I think he will be massacred in the Election. This cannot be buried, as Dr Stephen Ward will be on trial in October and there is bound to be a tribunal or inquiry. It is all terribly bad for politics and Parliament and is an indication of the decay of the old British Establishment. But in the long run it may do good by forcing us to re-examine some things we have ignored and creating the sort of crisis atmosphere which will make it easier for the Labour Party to reform.

  Friday 14 June

  We had a party this evening. Among those who came were Robin Day, Val and Mark Arnold-Forster, Liz and Peter Shore, Michael and Claudie Flanders, Simon Watson-Taylor with Carmen Manley and another girl, David Hockney, Shirley Fisher and a host of others.

  Obviously the main topic of conversation was the Profumo business, which produces new sensations every few hours. Mark assured me that the Tories had decided that Macmillan must go but he would be given a majority in the House on the understanding that he would resign in August. Apparently the two main contenders now for the succession are Butler and Hailsham – with Hailsham edging ahead since his television broadcast last night when he slashed out at the decline in public morals and attacked The Times, the Bishop of Woolwich, the Labour Party and the Welfare State, which encouraged people to believe they could get something for nothing. This sort of maniacal outburst is exactly what the Tory rank and file want and no one can give it to them better than Hailsham.

  By an extraordinary coincidence Hailsham is able to be considered for the premiership only because of my campaign which has led to the Peerage Bill at exactly the critical moment for him. All the Government have to do is to amend it so that it comes into operation immediately and Hailsham can then renounce next month. Mark Arnold-Forster has suggested to the Tories that Hailsham should then stand as Quintin Hogg for Profumo’s old seat at Stratford-on-Avon. This is a master stroke that will provide exactly the sort of opportunity the Tories are looking for to obliterate the traces of the scandal. Quintin is then elected an MP during August and immediately succeeds Macmillan so that when the House meets in October, Mr Hogg is the Prime Minister of a new administration with twelve months to try to persuade the country that this is a new, forward-looking, vigorous, proud administration that will make Britain great again. Hogg is to be our de Gaulle. Of course, it may not happen but it is true that the only circumstances under which Quintin has any chance of success are exactly these.

  Tuesday 18 June

  Rang Dick Crossman and we agreed that we should try to plan a terrific thrust now to get rid of the Government. The important thing is to prevent them from having time to regroup under a new leader and present themselves as being ‘under new management – no connection with the old firm’. All the papers this morning said that Macmillan was on the way out and so I wrote a paper for Harold, intended to suggest ways in which we could keep the pressure up and thus retain Macmillan or bring down the whole Government. Dick Crossman independently wrote a paper saying the same thing and we exchanged them.

  Friday 12 July

  If I dare confide an ambition to paper, the job I desperately want in the Labour Government is to be a member of the Cabinet as our permanent representative in New York at the United Nations; it would mean flying the Atlantic every week for Cabinet meetings. I believe it is the single most important job there is to do.

  Monday 15 July

  Wrote to the American Ambassador about the refusal of the American Government to grant a visa to Willie Gallacher on the grounds that he is a Communist. The old man is eighty-one and his sister is sick in Chicago. It really is heartless.

  Lunch with Tommy Balogh at St Stephen’s Restaurant to discuss his various projects. He is rather a nuisance in that he is always wanting to see me and it does take up such a hell of a lot of time. However, I am interested in what he is working on. He is jealous of the others who advise Harold and I think regards me as a useful link. He feels that his economic advice is negatived by the right-wing economists who advise Jim Callaghan. I can’t help with that and I suspect that Harold deliberately keeps all his advisers, including me and Dick and Peter, at arm’s length so that he is always in complete command. If I were him I should probably do the same, not wishing to be ‘taken over’ by anyone.

  Tuesday 16 July

  Drove to Northampton with Reggie Paget to speak at his Labour Women’s Supper Club. As I entered the Mayor’s Parlour, the Mayor handed me a card on which was written: ‘House of Lords defeated Government by 125 to 25 in favour of amendment that the Peerage Bill should come into force as soon as Royal Assent is received.’

  What a message to get from the Mayor of Northampton in Bradlaugh’s own constituency! It represents a total breakthrough. The Government cannot resist this and their retreat has turned into a rout. I shall be back in the Commons before Christmas and maybe even sooner.

  Thursday 18 July

  To Bristol for a public meeting which was crowded. Felt rather funny during my speech but finished it and answered a couple of questions. Then decided to withdraw while they looked for a doctor. None was available so Herbert Rogers drove me to Cossham Hospital, where I was admitted to casualty ward. Various doctors examined me and decided to keep me in for a series of tests. I felt lousy and was very glad when they put me to bed and knocked me out. Decided to tell Caroline in case she heard from other sources. It must have scared her to get a phone call from the night sister and a Ghanaian doctor to say that I was in hospital.

  Saturday 20 July

  Caroline had cancelled most of my engagements for the next couple of weeks. It’s so nice to have an excuse like this. She came down to Bristol yesterday and today stayed all day at the hospital and there were masses more visitors.

  Dr Poku, at my request, took a hypodermic full of blood and put it in a test tube for me, as a reminder of the ‘noble blood’ which I shall lose in a few days. He mixed it up with some anti-coagulant so that it wouldn’t dot and it turned blue most appropriately. He said he quite understood as his father was an Ashanti chief who had given it all up.

  Monday 29 July

  At 2.45 Mr Yavar Abbas of BBC Television News arrived to film us leaving for the Commons, and he then drove us to the Commons and filmed us greeting the coach party from Bristol (seventy strong) as it got to St Stephen’s entrance.

  It was a perfectly glorious, cloudless day and we stood and chatted outside St Stephen’s and then poured in in a solid phalanx, led by Charlie Pannell, up through the central lobby to the Members’ Dining Room. The Bristolians settled themselves down in the chairs all round the room and watched the other guests arrive.

  Caroline and I stood at the door and greeted them all as they came in. We don’t know exactly how many came but it was well over 300. Among those who were there were Clem Attlee (who had a talk to Stephen), Dora Gaitskell, Harold and Mary Wilson, Gerald Nabarro, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Lynn and Dorothy Ungoed-Thomas, the Bishop of Woolwich, Arthur Lourie (the Israeli Ambassador), Messaoud Kellou, the Algerian Ambassador and two members of the Soviet embassy staff who had come to represent Mr Romanov. Also there were Canon Collins, Lady Jowitt, Cassandra, John and Patsy Altrincham, A.V. Alexander and a host of Labour MPs.

  At 4.50, Charlie banged on the table and I jumped on a chair and made a speech that lasted about ten minutes. I summarised the history of the case and how long it had taken, and thanked the Party and especially Charlie Pannell. Also the Young Liberals like Lady Violet and Young Tories like Churchill. I also thanked the lobby and the lawyers, especially Michael Zander, and those who had given to the Bristol Fund, especially Lynn. I reserved the main bouquets for Bristol and for Herbert Rogers.

  Finally, I thanked the family and said I wished Father had been there. Then I made a few jokes about the Peerage Bill and produced the test tube of blood taken in the hospital. I finished by saying that the time had come to put pomp and pageantry back
in the museum and that this fight was the beginning of a much bigger fight which I was sure we would win too.

  I walked back to the North Court Restaurant with the Bristol party, where Mother had arranged a sit-down high tea for them all before they drove back to Bristol in their coach. At the restaurant there was another round of speeches and bouquets were presented to Mother and Caroline. Those people radiated warmth and affection and it was quite an experience for us all.

  To bed a very happy man.

  Wednesday 31 July

  The phone rang so incessantly that I couldn’t even shave so we took if off the hook. CBS Television sent a unit to film the family and Hilary (aged nine) gave a sensational interview in which he said, ‘The hereditary system is ridiculous and Britain ought to have a President who was elected instead of a Queen who was not.’ The interviewer asked him if he had studied the American system of government and Hilary replied, ‘Not in any detail, but I know what it adds up to.’ We had no idea what he was going to say, but after they told him they were going to ask him some questions. Caroline found him in the bathroom washing his face, and saying, ‘I am really nervous.’

  I went to the Commons for the weekly meeting in Harold Wilson’s office and then to Transport House for a broadcasting meeting. From there I picked up Mother and we met Caroline at 4.45 pm outside St Stephen’s entrance. There were two film cameramen and about thirty photographers. It was another lovely day and I took off my coat while we were photographed with the Instrument of Renunciation. We went to have tea in the Strangers’ Cafeteria, and then at about 5.50 we took our seats in the second row of the Lower West Gallery of the House of Lords. It annoyed me very much that the attendant kept calling me ‘My Lord’.