Political commentary

The use and abuse of Benn

Ferdinand Mount

Not long ago, a certain landowner in the county of D — — (the episode calls for a touch of 19th-century Russia) was choosing a new gamekeeper. The most promising candidate was a civil-spoken, weatherbeaten individual with first-rate references. His nutbrown face was a network of wrinkles. Was he perhaps a little old for the post? The landowner discussed the matter in lowered tones with his man of business, a younger gentleman of tender Sympathies, while the gamekeeper stood at a respectful distance the other side of the study table, twisting his cap in his hands. Breaking off the whispered discussion, the landowner suddenly barked: `Show us your legs, man.' The startled gamekeeper began, rather uncertainly, to walk to the far end of the long room. Taster'. He broke into a trot which ended in a kind of dancing skip as he came up against the wall. The young lawyer gazed in horror at the spectacle as the landowner murmured, not without satisfaction, 'only way to see if the chap's sound.'

Something of this scene — the abrupt and humiliating nature of the demand, the naked demonstration of power — was brought to mind by the extraordinary press conference given by Mr Tony Benn last week to announce his return to active camPaigning after his serious illness. Newspaper reports the next day described the occasion in terms of a lecture by Mr Berm on how the Labour Party should be run. In fact, the conference was dominated, in emotional intensity if not in time spent O n the topic, by the repeated efforts of the reporters and photographers to persuade Mr Benn to walk for their benefit.

There the parallel ends. Mr Benn stayed firmly seated. Where Shirley Williams would have danced on the table or Roy Hattersley would have jogged all night, Mr Berm showed true upper-class confidence by refusing to dance to the hacks' tune. He was not to be treated like a candidate gamekeeper.

Naturally one and all jumped to the conclusion that his legs are still 'wonky' — as he put it only a couple of weeks ago — despite his assertion that he is now '99 per cent fit' and has been swimming, cycling and playing cricket all August. It may well he that his illness has taken — and taken Permanently — more out of him than he cares to admit.

But how much does this matter? Think of PDR. What counts is that Mr Benn does not need to walk any more. He has the votes now to make other people jump. If not the Deputy Leadership this year, then hext year. Remember how far-fetched and Ill-timed his declaration that he would run against Denis Healey was said to be at the time. It smacked of panic, we were told, to rush to the news agencies in the middle of the night in order to forestall a formal appeal from the Tribune Group not to contest the Deputy Leadership.

Success has brought in its train the usual craven re-evaluation of ability. For 'he's quite barmy', now read 'you've got to admit he's a brilliant tactician.' As far as I can see, he remains the same type of shrewdstupid man-on-the-make without any real ideas of his own or any overall view of the world. This essentially limited and amoral personality — which otherwise would fit into the C3 category of demagogue alongside Soekarno and Nkrumah — is overlaid with 'colourful' quirks typical of the second and third generations of a rich and ambitious family: the guilt about inherited wealth accompanied by the usual reluctance to get rid of it, the ascetic teetotal habits, the fake proletarianism.

These supposedly `dotty' mannerisms combine to create an appearance of innocence and idealism — 'at least you've got to admit he's sincere' — which conceals and legitimises the most flagrantly self-seeking manoeuvres. Mr Benn manages to get away with apostasies far more treacherous than the much reviled Wilsons and Hattersleys would ever dream of.

The left loves a lord who pretends not to be one, yet keeps the same self-confidence. Mr Benn is perhaps the English answer to Mr Worsthorne's acute diagnosis of the perennial socialist dilemma — the conflict between the urge to destroy leadership elites and the need for more authoritiative leaders to run the socialist Leviathan.

Mr Foot may not be as decrepit as he looks, but in the state the Labour Party will be in a couple of years hence, the handover to Mr Benn may be no more than a formality. What reason would Mr Foot have to resist it, except personal pride? By then, on policy they will speak as one. The intervening conferences will have rubbed out the differences. Only last week, the TUC General Council abandoned its insistence on a referendum before withdrawal from the Common Market — one of the withered figleaves which Mr Foot has used to claim that he represents a less alarming, more responsible, kind of leadership than Mr Benn, with a greater awareness of the complexities of the world.

Even Mr Benn in his headlong progress may not at the outset have quite bargained for the manifesto which he is likely to be championing at the next General Election. Withdrawal from the Common Market and the abolition of the House of Lords were always odds-on. Unilateral nuclear disar mament was likely, too. But can withdrawal from NATO and the IMF be far behind, judging by Mr Benn's interview on Newsnight last week?

Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamisjolly nearly all, but there is a price to be paid — wonky legs and withdrawal from the Western alliance.

The sooner Mr Benn wins the Deputy leadership; the faster will grow the panic outside the Labour Party that he might actually win a General Election too. Increasingly, you hear it said that he is capable of sounding really quite moderate and sensible to the general viewing public. This is like the argument against pornography — that it is liable to corrupt other people. One Social Democrat leader recently said that he thought the shadow of Tony Benn was a more convincing bogey than his actual presence in the official leadership.

Perhaps. I think, though, that popular suspicion of Mr Benn is unusually deeprooted. More important, the Labour Party, with or without Mr Benn leading it, remains in poor condition for the winning of general elections.

It is here that the trade union connection becomes both morally and financially crucial. And it is here too that Mr Benn has scored his most underrated (because partly accidental) success.

Until now, the orthodoxy has been that `the unions won't have Benn at any price.' The Left-dominated ones might support him, but it would be dutifully, without enthusiasm. By trailing round the individual union conferences this spring and summer, Mr Benn might have picked up a few block votes for the Deputy Leadership — which from the union point of view is a sideshow — but he would not have established any lasting rapport.

In practice, what he helped to do, by holding his relentless fringe meetings while the old guard were already out boozing, was to re-politicise these torpid gatherings and give the up-and-coming young ranters something to rant about.

By contrast, the old guard are silenced and forlorn. They have so little to boast of: no great pay battles won, no new quangos emblazoned, no Downing Street summits. How pitifully eager the TUC leaders were to make much of their meeting with Mrs Thatcher to discuss the inner cities.

Where else can the big unions look for prominence and power now but from the movement's links with the Labour Party? Both internally and externally, even the right-wing leaders are under pressure to make a united front with the Labour leadership, regardless of `personalities'. We are seeing the death of Callaghanism — the belief that in the last resort the trade union `heavies' would be able to rescue the Labour leader from the Left. Track the flight path of Mr David Basnett and you may be tempted to mutter `heavy like a feather'. Are we now to see a New Bennism — in which a Left-wing Labour Party rescues the trade union leaders from their industrial weakness?