'THE BITCHIEST THING I'VE READ'

not to publish this interview with Tony Benn. . . until now

TONY Berm's diaries are published soon. The following extract has been quoted in the serialisation in the Sunday Telegraph

This evening Susan Crosland brought her unspeakable article for me to vet. It was the bitchiest, most horrible thing I've ever read and I decided to be bold and ring her up and asked her not to publish it. She was much taken aback, no doubt hurt, but she assented immediately. I should never have accepted in the first place.

Out of the Wilderness, page 240, Saturday 3 April 1965, his 40th birthday.

Here is the original article, written for the pre-Murdoch left-wing Sun, and be- cause of Mr Benn's objections, never published: `Mr Benn is a pest!' said a weary telephone manager to me shortly after Anthony Wedgwood Benn became Post- master General. This was because I had asked the manager to show me a gadgety telephone like one the PMG straps on his head in order to be able to free his hands for writing and whatnot. (Mr Benn is a zealot for using time efficiently.) The same telephone manager now con- cedes that it is the 'pest' aspect of Mr Benn — his intense tenacity for going after something — that is, in fact, already getting results in the GPO. It was this same tenacity which sharply advanced the lumbering modernisation of Britain — for it was of course Mr Benn alone who against enormous odds forced through the Lords Reform Bill in 1963.

'People who wanted to be cynical said, "Oh, the chap is ambitious" and that may be true,' said Mr Benn when we met in his office. 'But equally I used to be humiliated by the idea of being a peer.

'People will think that because my father was made a peer and I went to Westmins- ter, that I'm an aristocratic progressive. I'm not. I come from four generations of fierce radicalism. . . . My origins are East End origins. My great-grandfather was a lay preacher in Stepney Green.'

It should be said that as well as being radical, Mr Benn's grandfather and father were highly successful in public life, the one being made the first baronet, Sir J. Williams Benn, the other being made the first Viscount Stansgate.

'It's partly the non-conformist and radic- al inheritance that accounts for my being a teetotaller,' Mr Benn went on, drawing on the pipe which is a good companion for his intensity. In his dark grey flannel suit and white shirt and black tie and short haircut, he looks not unlike a successful young advertising executive on Madison Avenue. 'Drink was a great problem in the East End of London. My grandfather was a great campaigner against it. My great-aunt never saw the joke when she used to sing, "The good ship Temperance is heading for the port".

'I don't campaign. I just don't drink. There are teetotallers and teetotallers.'

Indeed there are. A number of Mr Benn's friends who drink protest that they inevitably come reeling out of his house because he pours alcohol for others as if it were water. He and his glamorous Amer- ican wife excel at hospitality. Some of it, it is true, is laid on a little early for every- one's taste. Currently they have people to breakfast at 7.30 in the morning.

'Not every day,' Mr Benn assured me. 'This week in fact I had somebody come as late as eight. You see, I'm at my brightest and best in the morning.'

Did not some people, I asked, take a dim view of conversing at that. hour? 'Nobody's ever refused,' said Mr Benn cheerfully. Perhaps because they couldn't easily plead a previous engagement?

He maintains that his alleged interest in gadgetry is not for the sake of gadgetry but for efficiency. 'The organisation of my day is an interesting thing to me. The thing about the Post Office is that it's the only department that is really administrative. I like getting things done. I like my dentist, because all he's interested in is teeth. He talks to me continuously about teeth. I like people who want to do their jobs well.'

A sinister buzzing noise, alarmingly like a dentist's drill, suddenly began to issue from one of the instruments on Mr Benn's desk. Sternly he fixed his large brown eyes upon one of the machines. 'That's very strange,' he said, in his reassuring baritone voice. 'It's a telephone. It isn't making a normal noise. Don't worry.'

So I stopped worrying, and in time the buzzing dentist's drill stopped, and Mr Benn returned his eyes to the distant corner of the room and puffed some more on his pipe.

Sometime he is teased for his regular platform performance of loosening his tie and eventually removing his jacket, but he refuses to accept this as a consciously developed mannerism. 'I take off my coat because I get very hot,' he said. 'I like fiery meetings in the old style. And I like informality. It creates an entirely different atmosphere from addressing a meeting. I like being on the same level.'

Last September the Benns entered the eldest of their four children in the compre- hensive school just across from their home in Holland Park Avenue. 'The idea that there was a conflict between our prefer- ence and principle just isn't true,' said Mr Benn, propping his feet against the top of his desk and tucking his knees under his chin. 'When our first child was born in 1951, there were not any comprehensive schools in existence.' So they put him down for Westminster.

'I have always admired the naturalness of US high schools. American education is underrated by people in this country: in order to keep ourselves comforted, we always compare our best with the Amer- ican average. When history comes to be written, the comprehensive schools will be seen to be the famous mark of educational advancement in the 20th century. My eldest boy will die about 2040. You've got to look ahead.'

Not able to look ahead that far, I asked Mr Benn about a remark he was reported to have made early in his career: 'I want to get rid of the stigma of being an intellec- tual' — a remark which led his close friend Anthony Crosland to reply, 'You'd better get the stigma first before you worry about losing it!'

'Actually, I never said that,' said Mr Benn, because I know I'm not an intellec- tual. This is not said out of false modesty. I'm just not. I'm a very unfabian Fabian. I'm a short-haired Socialist rather than a long-haired one.' (Mr Benn's new crew cut electrified Parliament when he appeared on the Government front bench.) 'For many years my father kept a chart on how to eliminate the waste of time. If your hair is short, you don't have to brush it. I calculate that at the end of the year you've saved a day over people with long hair,' he added, clearly delighted at the thought.

In fact, the only time Mr Benn was in the least querulous was on the subject of the Post Office. 'You haven't asked me any- thing about it,' he said in some aggrieve- ment. 'I'm longing to tell you about it. It's such an interesting subject. But I won't impose my views on you.'

He doesn't need to. He's imposing them where it counts.