Every day a day for politics
Philip Ziegler
DIARIES 1991-2001: FREE AT LAST by Tony Benn, edited by Ruth Winstone Hutchinson, £25, pp. 738, ISBN 0091793521 In his 76 years of active political life (he is now 77) Tony Berm has consistently exhibited courtesy, generosity, high principles and triumphant wrong-headedness. He never achieved the supreme office to which his intelligence and energy might have entitled him, but the Labour party, indeed the nation, would have been impoverished by his absence.
These are the diaries of his declining years. By 1991 he had long ceased to hold important office and was increasingly out of touch with his party leadership: 'I have to recognise that I'm not a very significant figure any more,' he wrote. Mo Mowlam was not Benn's favourite minister: 'She sort of smirks and smiles, and there is no substance at all.' Yet after she took the trouble to telephone him, he praised her lavishly. He was accused of flattery. 'I do think she has done well,' he protested; 'anyway. I was flattered that a secretary of state should ring me at home.'
These diaries are therefore less momentous than those for previous decades. He was ceaselessly active: writing to the newspapers; speaking on radio and television; talking at length, sometimes excessive length, in the House of Commons. He always provided good copy, could be relied on for a piquant or provocative remark. Yet he was taken less seriously; even when he had a valid point to make ministers were inclined to dismiss him as a quaint extremist, to be treated with politeness but a measure of indifference.
He was himself very conscious of this diminution. Beneath the rectitude, sometimes even the arrogance, of his public persona, lay touching uncertainty. When John Major gave him a lift back from John Smith's funeral in Edinburgh, Benn commented that it was a momentous day:
And I did feel — having had the opportunity of travelling with the prime minister, and a former prime minister, and so many other ministers — that I have been moved up into the top scale.
He would not have needed to reassure himself in this way a decade before.
These years are haunted by the slow and painful death of his beloved wife. Caroline. Anyone who doubted Tony Benn's humanity and his capacity for love, need only read this anguished chronicle. 'She was the finest person I ever met in the whole of my life,' wrote Benn. 'She just absolutely radiated goodness.' Her death left him desolate, yet the affectionate sympathy shown by his family and friends must have convinced him not only that his wife had been highly esteemed but that he too was loved and valued. 'Arthur Scargill, Lady Wilson, right-wing Tories, communists,' joined in offering consolation. Many people disagreed with Benn, some feared him, yet few did not view him with affection.
His childlike love of novel technology is another prominent strand. New gadgets constantly enter his life: a Dymo Electronic Labeller which has got a QWERTY keyboard and will produce beautiful labels; a Message Master Which is my latest toy and buzzes when there are messages. Trouble is I didn't have any messages. so I rang up and left myself a lot.' Sometimes they
betrayed him — a talking clock which announced the hour every hour, but as he forgot how to switch it off he had to hide it in the bathroom at night. Such reverses never discomfited him. He thought the Dome 'terribly impressive' and spent a 'thoroughly enjoyable day' visiting the various zones, 'There was a picture of me in the people zone,' he noted approvingly; the only disappointment was the faith zone, which 'had all sorts of faiths, but no socialist faith'.
New Technology, yes; New Labour, no. Benn deplored the efforts of Neil Kinnock to turn the Labour party into something which might one day win an election; in his eight years as Leader Kinnock had destroyed it 'financially as well as politically, morally and intellectually and organisationally.' John Smith was better but still a failure. Gordon Brown was vacuous and unconvincing, 'he just doesn't look as if you could trust him with a corner shop'. Blair was worst of all. Benn began by viewing him with cautious approval, his first speech as Leader was 'good and radical and I have no complaint about it'. But soon the battle began for the rewriting of Clause 4. Blair's new draft was 'quite incredible. Absolute Liberal, SDP, Tory-wet stuff.' By 1996 Blair's speech to conference was 'National Front, it was everything that I feared, and it made me absolutely sick'. A cross between Billy Graham and the Prince of Wales, Benn considered him. On Christmas Day 1999, when a film starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge was shown on television, Benn reflected that the days of Dickens had returned: 'Blair is taking us back to Victorian liberalism with an authoritarian touch to it.'
'But this is not a day for politics,' he continued. He fooled himself; for Benn every day was a day for politics. The question of whether he should retire from the House of Commons became ever more anguishing. Retreat to the Lords, for so many members an acceptable halfway house, was for him impossible; only if democratically elected could he have accepted a peerage. He told himself that he would retire from parliament to devote more time to politics, but he didn't really believe it. As it turned Out, he was to find a rewarding life outside the Commons, but in May 2001, when the diary ends, the prospects seemed bleak.
He subtitles this final volume 'Free at Last'. If his half-century in the Commons was a period of servitude, we can indeed look forward to some dramatic escapades in the next few years. But perhaps some elements of sobriety are creeping in. Towards the end of his parliamentary life he illicitly installed two plaques in the House of Commons to commemorate his special heroes. The Speaker ordered that they should be removed, 'At my age you should be treated with respect.' Benn grumbled, then added thoughtfully, 'I suppose at my age you should also obey the law.'
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