New Labour, new diaries. With the election of the Labour government on 1 May 1997 a crop of young diarists – from spin doctors to ballet dancers – anticipated the transformation of Britain under Tony Blair and New Labour. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s master of communications, wrote a breathless account of events in and around 10 Downing Street. Lance Price, for a time his deputy, also kept a diary. Starting on the day of the election, for twenty months Deborah Bull, the principal ballerina with The Royal Ballet, kept a diary which, uniquely, combined dancing and politics. Oona King, newly elected Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, gives us a blow-by-blow account as she steps into ‘the boxing ring’. And Piers Morgan’s editorship at the News of the World and the Daily Mirror coincided with ‘a scandalous decade’ (from 1994 to 2004), which he scrupulously records. Lord Longford in his Prison Diary ponders ‘crime and the causes of crime’.
Tony Benn, after his voluntary departure from the Commons in 2001 continues the diary he had started forty years earlier. Chris Mullin records anticipating a Prime Ministerial summons that took some time to materialise. Alan Bennett confides his thoughts on Diana, mad-cow disease and the impending Iraq war.
The movement to ban hunting with dogs, which had been led by Tony Banks, Michael Foster and a handful of MPs from all parties before 1997, dragged on for seven years.* Meantime the European Union continued to grow in extent and power; there was a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo; the twin towers of New York were attacked and destroyed; the Afghan War began; and the United States and Britain went to war with Saddam Hussein. Despite these international distractions the New Labour government’s programme of reform and spending in the public services, notably in education and health, went ahead.
Thursday, 1 May 1997
General Election Day
By 10 pm I was struggling to keep my eyes open after two strenuous shows in fifteen hours and precious little sleep between them. Sensing that something momentous was going on and eager to be there as it happened, I did my best to keep pace with the Newsnight swing-o-meter. But election coverage is difficult to follow at the best of times, and the political analysts weren’t helping a bit. Nor did it help that my eyelids were getting heavier by the minute, and for about half an hour I fought to stay awake in the belief that with just a bit more concentration I would surely figure out what was going on.
By midnight I was out for the count, and Blair, so it seemed, was in.
Deborah Bull
Wednesday, 7 May 1997
Westminster
The big news of today is the meeting of the new PLP – 418 strong – in the Church of England’s grand assembly hall. An extraordinary scene with MPs in serried ranks, including those from such unlikely places as Hove, Hastings and Wimbledon. After a short speech from John Prescott, Tony Blair emerges from a door like a young Kennedy, smiles and waves for the cameras, and makes a stern and moving address to his large army. As he starts a bleeper goes off – very new Labour. Tony says that ‘the weight of history is upon our shoulders’. Rejecting Sir Hartley Shawcross’s 1945 dictum, ‘We are the masters now,’ Tony’s dictum for a less triumphalist age is ‘We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the people’s servants.’
He also reminds us that ‘It was New Labour wot won it … we ran for office as New Labour. We govern as New Labour.’
Then there is discipline … You are here not ‘to enjoy the trappings of power but to do a job and uphold the highest standards in public life’ – all splendidly sober stuff.
Giles Radice
Wednesday, 18 June 1997
Today was the first reading of my Private Member’s Bill. The Private Member’s Bill is Parliament’s equivalent of the national lottery … If your number comes up you get a chance to change the law of the land.
I won the lottery when my name came up last month … Was flooded with ideas for legislation from virtually every lobby group in the country.
My Bill helps people like my GMB (union) members who lost their employment rights when their jobs were contracted out by local authorities.
If a hospital contracts out its cleaning staff at bargain-basement rates, it has only to consider the money it saves. It doesn’t have to consider the quality of the service, i.e. are the wards filthy or clean?
(The government whips) said they would support it if I could get the CBI and the TUC and the Tory front bench to support it too. Thanks a mil. Why not ask me to get the Israelis and Palestinians to issue a joint peace statement instead? … But I’m giving it a go.
Oona King
Thursday, 19 June 1997
Conservative leadership election
The day of decision for the Tories – I run across [Kenneth] Clarke in Westminster Hall and wish him good luck. I ask him whether the deal with Redwood will muzzle the pro-Europeans. ‘Not at all,’ says Clarke with his usual breezy confidence.
At 5.15 the Tory result is announced – Hague 92, Clarke 70. The ‘Molotov–Ribbentrop’ pact has failed … So William Hague is the new Tory leader. He seems much older than 36 with his bald head and his measured Yorkshire voice.
Giles Radice
Friday, 4 July 1997
The Americans have landed a computer-driven vehicle on Mars. It made a flawless landing after a journey of 308 million miles. Mind-boggling.
Chris Mullin
Saturday, 2 August 1997
Cincinnati, USA
Rang my brother Dave in London, who read me the list of all the peers who have been appointed, which included Michael Levy, who organised Tony Blair’s blind fund, raised £1 million for Blair’s office.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 31 August 1997
London
I was awoken at 4 am by the telephone. It was Torje in Toronto. He had just returned from dinner and turned on CNN. ‘I thought you’d want to know; there’s been a car crash in Paris. They’re saying that Dodi Al Fayed is dead, and Princess Diana is injured.’ In my semi-conscious state I turned on the television. For about half an hour I watched the coverage, saw the wreckage of the Mercedes in that Paris tunnel and wondered at Diana’s luck, to have survived what must have been an enormous impact.* My God! Eventually I dozed back to sleep and the television turned itself off.
Deborah Bull
‘God created a blond angel and called her Diana.’ This is one of the cards on the flowers outside Kensington Palace that the BBC chooses to zoom in on. It purports to be from a child, though whether one is supposed to be touched by it or (as is my inclination) to throw up isn’t plain.
HMQ to address the nation tomorrow. I’m only surprised Her Majesty hasn’t had to submit to a phone-in.
Alan Bennett
Saturday, 6 September 1997
I watched mainly on TV but then went upstairs to watch [the funeral procession] come across Horseguards, then out to Whitehall as it came past Downing Street and there was more noise than I expected. There was a good mood in the crowd and several moments I found particularly moving. The card from the kids. I thought Elton John was tremendous. TB’s reading was OK. The main event though for me was Charles Spencer’s tribute, in which he directed barbs both at the press and the royal family. TB was sure the attack on the press would be the main thing … He asked me to speak to GB and Peter, which I did. They were more relaxed. GB felt, rightly in my view, that Spencer’s attacks on the royals would be far more newsworthy.*
Alastair Campbell
Tuesday, 16 September 1997
On Sunday, two days ago, the Greenham Common fence was knocked down at the airbase – the Americans have gone. When they were there, insofar as they were mentioned at all, the women were always referred to as witches and lesbians and trouble-makers and crypto-communists. I thought to myself, ‘That is another victory from the bottom up that is never recognised.’
Tony Benn
Saltwood Castle
This morning the news (leaked) that Hague was going to dispense with hereditary peerages (i.e. adopt Blair’s ‘reforms’). For me this is the last straw – already. Coming on top of message to Gay Pride, Notting Hill carnival (aren’t there any worthwhile causes he could send a message to?). It’s got him marked. Give him a good bit more rope, though.
Alan Clark
Tuesday, 30 September 1997
Labour Party Conference, Brighton
Blair’s speech electrified the audience. He gave his ‘not the biggest, but the best’ rhetoric the full Tony, all raised fists and slightly evangelical delivery. I can see Blair doing one of those US preacher-style tours one day – the ones that end with ‘I have sinned – now give me your cash, O believers.’
Later we had lunch with him and Cherie, our annual Mirror conference tradition. It was all going quite well until the issue came up of Blair’s pay rise or lack of it. The Mirror had run a campaign to stop him and the Cabinet awarding themselves big salary hikes, and they had eventually backed down.
‘It’s alright for you,’ Cherie said. ‘But we have had to give up our house in Islington and we can’t make any investments. The pay rise would just bring the Cabinet in line with jobs of similar importance.’
That may be true, I said ‘but I don’t think the average Mirror reader expects their first Labour Prime Minister in eighteen years to be filling his boots quite so quickly.’
Cherie scowled at me.
Piers Morgan
Friday, 3 October 1997
Unexpectedly, Lord Gowrie has resigned his post as Chairman of the Arts Council … the rumours abound and speculation runs high. Gowrie is without doubt a Tory man through and through. Although an appointment such as this should be apolitical, it has long been feared that he and the Labour administration would not see eye to eye.
It seems that Gowrie’s departure may mark the end of an era in the arts. The government has hinted that there is no reason why the post of Arts Council chairman should remain ‘non-executive’, a euphemism for unpaid. Stand aside what [Times journalist] Valerie Grove calls the ‘languid well-connected patron of the arts’. Make way for the business manager who, with his market surveys and eye on the balance sheet, will make sure that the ‘people’s money is spent on the people’s priorities’, to quote Tony Blair. Clear the stages of Giselle and Swan Lake, and make way for a new production starring Anthea Turner and a lot of coloured balls.
Deborah Bull
Thursday, 6 November 1997
The government is becoming accident prone. First the botch up over the hunting bill. Now cigarette advertising. Tessa Jowell announced yesterday that Formula One racing was to be exempt from the much-heralded ban on cigarette advertising. The decision seems to have come from Downing Street after a visit by a powerful lobby of motor racers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we learn this morning that Tessa’s husband had some sort of commercial relationship with the Formula One team.* Not that Tessa is at fault. She apparently declared the possible conflict of interest months ago.
Chris Mullin
Thursday, 20 November 1997
Breakfast at 8 am at Goldman Sachs with the millionaire economist Gavyn Davies (the Treasury Select Committee’s adviser). He tells me that he is the best paid economist in the Western world. He is worried about the Far East crash, especially about its impact on Japan – says that our economy is still overheated and there may well not be a ‘soft’ landing.
Referring to economists, he says they should be humble considering how many times they get things wrong.
Giles Radice
Wednesday, 10 December 1997
(Monday) I went to the Privy Council dinner – Royal Gallery … presided by Prince of Wales and including various – Cranborne, Ancram, Tom King and – God alive, how did he get one? – Atkins, R.* Copious and excellent wines.
The Queen is transformed, no longer the wicked stepmother with her frumpish and ill-natured features that have been permanently in place since Mrs T. rescued the 1992 election. As I said at the time, the whole Royal family delighted at the elimination of Diana, and has now settled back comfortably into their favourite role – preservation of their own perks and privileges at the expense, whenever necessary, of other individuals and institutions. The Empire, the Church, the Law, the hereditary principle, the Lords, even a yacht, and now there are droves of faithful servants who are being dismissed in droves as they modernise Sandringham and Balmoral.
Alan Clark
Thursday, 11 December 1997
I was part of history today in a very weird and rather uncomfortable way. Blair had asked me to go and see him at No 10 for a chat along with some of my political team before everyone disappears for the festive season.
When we arrived we were taken in – very unusually – through a back door.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Look down the corridor,’ came the cryptic reply.
And so I did and there were Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams making the first official visit by Sinn Fein to Downing Street … waiting with Blair to go out for their historic handshake. It was an amazing moment. And reminded me once again of Blair’s real achievement in Northern Ireland. He has worked so hard to get to this point, rarely getting the credit he deserves …
Ten minutes later, Blair was back in his office, striding towards me to shake my hand. ‘Erm, got any rubber gloves, Prime Minister?’
He laughed. ‘God those two are nothing. Some of the other world leaders I’ve had here recently, from some of the African states for instance, make them look like choirboys.’
Piers Morgan
Tuesday, 3 February 1998
Paris with the Treasury Select Committee
The high spots are the meeting with two key EMU players – Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the morning and Jean-Claude Trichet in the evening. Strauss-Kahn, the new Socialist Finance Minister, is a bit like Gordon Brown – powerful, energetic and highly intelligent. If anybody is going to make the French government coherent, it will be him … He says he is keen to have Britain in the Euro but we cannot be members of the Euro committee unless we join [the currency].
Trichet, the Governor of the Bank of France, has come back specifically from Frankfurt to meet us.
He wants us to join as soon as possible but says that, according to the treaty, the UK should be two years in the ERM to show that our currency is stable.
Giles Radice
Saturday, 14 February 1998
On Thursday I went down to Croydon, to the Fairfield Hall, to hear one of my nephews and my niece in the Bromley Borough Schools’ Prom. Last year they sang Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo, a Joseph Horowitz composition … [and] they boasted none other than the eighty-something-year-old Mr Horowitz himself at the piano.
The Bromley Borough Schools’ Prom should be required viewing for Education Minister David Blunkett and his cabinet colleagues. No one in the Fairfield Hall on Thursday could possibly doubt the importance of musical (and artistic) education and the benefits it brings to children above and beyond the ability to simply ‘strum a tune.’
Last night, at the opposite extreme of individual artistry, I saw the penultimate West End performance of Antony Sher in Cyrano.
Sher gave a searing performance – something to be treasured.
Deborah Bull
Tuesday, 17 February 1998
I went in for Robin Cook’s speech on Iraq. He made a good case. There is no doubt that Saddam has the ingredients (some of which we sold him) for making all sorts of unpleasant weapons and within a year or two he may have a delivery system. Nor do I need to be convinced that Saddam is a monster and that his overthrow is desirable. I just can’t see how bombing his infrastructure will help. What are we going to do for an encore when he pops up afterwards and says ‘Ha, Ha, I’m still here’?
I agonised all evening about how to vote. This time round there is no One True Path. Just about everyone is uneasy. I wobbled back and forth all evening. In the end when the bell went I simply stayed in my room and didn’t vote. Not a very heroic posture.
Chris Mullin
Friday, 6 March 1998
Went in early this morning for the debate on the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs) Bill. All the Tories turned up in force. The whole thing was occupied with Heseltine, Hogg, Nicholas Winterton and all the fox hunters talking the Bill out. I thought, ‘What a bloody fraud!’ Here is the Labour Party saying they promised a free vote on hunting with the clear implication that if the House wanted a Bill they would find time for the Bill to go through.
And the Chief Whip has outlined the problems that this will cause in the Lords – there is not enough room in the Lords’ timetable for a controversial bill in this session … So really, many people who voted Labour, and the animal-welfare people who put £1 million into the campaign, have been betrayed.
I had a word with Tony Banks in the Lobby and he is as sick as a dog.
Tony Benn
To the Park Lane Hilton to hear Mandelson talk about the Dome. His claims for the Dome are preposterous – ‘the global focus for the new millennium’; ‘consumerism and community in equal measure’; ‘a great shared national experience’. He speaks mainly in bromides and clichés, but despite the PR hype, he has a certain self confidence and bravura.
Giles Radice
Tuesday, 24 March 1998
Murdoch came up at the Parliamentary Committee. The papers are full of stories alleging that the Main Man* has been ringing up the Italian Prime Minister on Murdoch’s behalf. I asked (1) who initiated the call to [Romano] Prodi? and (2) what is our relationship with Murdoch? The Man was visibly irritated. ‘I don’t reveal the details of private conversations,’ he said testily. I replied that I just want to know who initiated it. He seemed to say it was Prodi, adding, ‘The story in today’s Telegraph is a load of balls.’ Then he relaxed and said, ‘My relationship with Murdoch is no different from that with any other newspaper proprietor. I love them all equally.’ He added forcefully, ‘I have never discussed media policy with Murdoch.’
Jean [Corston] raised hunting, saying it had become an issue of trust. The Man smiled wearily. ‘I do understand the strength of feeling,’ he said not very convincingly. The longer this goes on, the more convinced I am that the problem is Mandelson and his friends in high places. Jean approached me in the Tea Room afterwards and reported that Nick Brown (the Chief Whip) had told her that the advice from the Palace is that the Royals are not merely opposed, they won’t have it. Won’t they, indeed? I thought Mandelson was supposed to be trying to brush up the Prince of Wales’s image. If so, the most useful advice he could give his new-found friend is not to side with the Unspeakable.
Chris Mullin
With The Royal Ballet in Germany
The opening night of Sleeping Beauty in Frankfurt and I am writing this between appearances as the Fairy of Passion in the Prologue and the Bluebird in Act Three.
[Today] we lost yet another Chief Executive. Mary Allen, after a short seven months in office, has resigned. Amazing. All in all she was with us almost twice as long as Genista McIntosh who took over from Jeremy Isaacs last January and resigned in May.
Once again we have lost our rudder in a fierce and ongoing storm, and I guess a small but select bunch of MPs have pulled on their dancing shoes to dance, yet again, on the grave of the Opera House.*
Deborah Bull
Monday, 6 April 1998
Set off to visit my friend Father Fred in Wandsworth, with paedophiles very much on my mind. The word has suddenly become all too popular, or rather unpopular. It is used in all sorts of misleading ways. One extreme are serial child killers. At the other, like the much-loved Catholic priest who was suspended for a time from his parish for fondling a seventeen year old boy twenty five years earlier.
Matthew Parris has done a useful job in The Times in protesting against the lynch-mob hysteria. But much clarification is necessary before any wise measures can be adopted.
Lord Longford
Thursday, 21 May 1998
In the afternoon I went to Millbank Tower [Labour Party Headquarters]. Tom Sawyer the General Secretary of the Party, was very friendly … we walked round this open plan office with about 150 people there working on computers. He pointed in a general direction and said, ‘That’s the marketing department; that’s the finance department; that’s the constitutional department; those are the policy people.’
I got the feeling that it was an organisation of an entirely managerial character, with a lot of young people in their shirt sleeves; it might have been a bank, an insurance company, Tory Central Office – it might have been anywhere. There were posters everywhere, pictures of Blair, New Britain, New Labour, No Increase in Taxation, all over the place; it was really weird.
As I was walking back to my car, I saw a very old lady with a walking stick accompanied by a young black nurse. And as I stopped at the car she said to me, ‘Tony!’ And I looked at her and her face was familiar, though she was very old. She’s eighty four now – it was Rosamund John, the actress.*
So I stood and talked to her for quite a while about her films Green for Danger, and The Way to the Stars. She was very touched I think and very gentle and sweet and at the end I said, ‘May I give you a kiss – something I’ve always wanted to do.’
Then she said, ‘I must go now, I must go on walking.’
I said to the nurse, ‘She’s a very, very famous actress.’ The nurse had no idea.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 25 June 1998
There was a Policy Unit lunch today on Europe. Quite clear there is no coherent strategy. Roger Liddle [Adviser on Europe] hugely in favour of the single currency but many sceptics around the table. One idea is to have a Europe minister who reports directly to the Prime Minister. General feeling that TB won’t want the next election fought on the single currency but I said that [Blair] having acknowledged that the referendum would be shortly after the election, that was all but inevitable.
Lance Price
July 1998
The government’s early indications that they might be on the verge of doing something positive for the arts bore fruit this month with the announcement of the outcome of their annual spending review. Culture Secretary Chris Smith has secured an extra £290 million for his department and much of it will be passed on to the arts, with just a few strings attached. Nice work …
But there’s no such thing as a free lunch and all this largesse comes with a price tag. In return, Chris Smith wants improved access and increased educational activities. Joy of joys! This is like handing me a brown envelope stuffed with used notes* and saying, ‘You’ll have to spend it in Harvey Nichols, though.’ Nothing would make me happier and, Mr Smith, nothing will make us arts people happier.
Deborah Bull
Wednesday, 1 July 1998
The master strategists at Millbank, many of whom have never knocked on a door in their lives, are dreaming up more pointless activity to take our minds off mischief. Everyone had been sent a glossy brochure, crammed with useless inserts, to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the NHS. Among them a list of so-called campaigning ideas. Sample:
• Have a photo-op outside a local hospital with a large syringe with the words ‘Labour’s £2 billion cash injection for the NHS’ written on it. Your regional press officer has a four-foot model syringe that can be used for this picture.
• Arrange a photo-opportunity with a long serving local NHS worker who is celebrating their own fiftieth birthday this year.
• Arrange to spend a morning on a normal working day with an ambulance crew. Invite the media, but get your own photographer anyway so you can do a retrospective press release.
And so on … It is as though our masters have set up a vast play scheme to keep us amused while they get on, unhindered, with the serious business of government.
Chris Mullin
Friday, 24 July 1998
It’s announced this morning that the three hundred or so soldiers shot for cowardice during the First World War are not to be pardoned, though in a speech later described as ‘deeply felt’ the Armed Forces Minister, Dr Reid, says that their names can now be inscribed on war memorials and that they will be pardoned in our hearts etc. The official reason they cannot be pardoned is that there is now (as there no doubt was then) little evidence as to who were genuinely cowards, poor wretches, and who were innocent and that it would never do to pardon the guilty with the innocent. Why not? If among three hundred there was one who was innocent (and there were many more) then his innocence should procure the pardon of them all. Or so Simone Weil would have said. But Simone Weil doesn’t have much clout in the Ministry of Defence … I write to Frank Dobson, my MP, saying, intemperately, that John Reid is more of a coward than many of the men who were executed.
Alan Bennett
Saturday, 22 August 1998
Clinton launched air strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan [‘terrorist targets’] on Thursday night. TB gave immediate support but Robin Cook refused to go on the Today programme to defend it, saying there might be collateral damage and it could be difficult …
Discussions about proportional representation etc. Paddy Ashdown has been in touch with TB in France to talk about proportional representation with a view to keeping the Tories out for a very long time.
Maybe TB is just stringing Paddy along with no intention of going as far as he [Paddy] wants. But it does sound as if a pretty detailed strategy has already been agreed.
Lance Price
Friday, 4 September 1998
Chester-le-Street
To the north for my constituency dinner for Mo Mowlam. Mo arrives at the Riverside ground surrounded by security police, in a state of complete exhaustion. I have to help her up the stairs and she only revives after a Mars bar and a double whisky. It is not surprising that she is exhausted. This week she had all-night emergency legislation and a visit by Clinton and Blair to Omagh to see the aftermath of the appalling destruction by the IRA.* I asked about Clinton’s pre-Starr Report mood. ‘Bad,’ says Mo. ‘And Hillary?’ ‘Even worse.’
I tell the dinner guests that Mo is deservedly the most popular politician in the UK because of her great contribution to peace in Northern Ireland. Mo explains in her speech that she could not have done it without Clinton and Aherne, and she might have added Tony Blair.
At the end she is so tired that I almost have to carry her out to her car. She really is a star.
Giles Radice
Sunday, 27 September 1998
Labour Party Conference, Blackpool
An Asian man from the north-west came up to me today asking if I could advise him on getting a peerage. He said, ‘I know Jack Straw.’ He’d written to the Prime Minister asking for a peerage and made the point that he was a very active member of CND. Somebody said to me that the trouble with this Conference is that there are too many people on the make. There was a guy who worked for Leonard Cheshire Homes and said that he was leaving Conference early because he was disgusted by all the people who were there to get something.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 11 November 1998
House of Commons
Oona King to go to the Prime Minister’s office immediately. Fucking hell, I thought, what have I done now? A message like that could only be bad.
I knocked on the open door and entered the first of two antechambers. Two people I didn’t recognise were sitting at a desk, next to a whirring photocopier.
‘They’re waiting for you, please go in.’
I knocked peremptorily before pushing the door open, and closing it behind me. Inside were three people who ran the court of Tony, if not the country.
Alastair Campbell sat leaning against a desk to the left. Sally Morgan was sitting at a desk directly ahead. Anji Hunter leaned against a sideboard on the right.* Next to Anji, the door to the main office was ajar, and Tony was sitting at his desk poring over papers in his red Prime Minister’s folder, evidently preparing for PMQs which would start in twenty minutes. He looked up and nodded in my direction before returning to work.
‘Ah Oona, thanks for coming,’ said Alastair jovially.
‘No problem, what can I do?’
‘We need your help with something,’ continued Alastair.
‘Always willing to help,’ I said, with a bright smile and sinking heart.
‘We need you to pen an article.’ I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
‘About?’
‘Ken Livingstone.’
‘Ken?’
‘Yeah, Ken.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, as you know, he’s trying to undermine the Labour Party, and we have to ensure he doesn’t succeed.’
It was worse than I thought.
‘What sort of article?’
‘An article saying he can’t be trusted …’
I simply believed that Ken had the right, like any other member of the Labour Party, to put himself forward. It was a democratic process and we shouldn’t undermine it. If he won and got selected – well, tough, that was democracy …
‘Thing is,’ I said, trying to force a smile, ‘I don’t go in for personal attacks. It’s not my style. And the other thing is, I don’t agree with this strategy. We’re alienating everyone, and Ken’s going to win. Surely that’s not what you want.’
This irritated all of them, and they each proceeded to tell me just how much Ken couldn’t be trusted, and what a danger he was to the party.
‘Look,’ said Sally finally in exasperated tones, ‘he’s out to destroy the Labour Party, and we have to respond.’
‘But you see Sally, I don’t agree that he’s out to destroy the Labour Party. He just has a different point of view.’
‘Bollocks!’ Sally slammed the desk with her fist, and I jumped involuntarily. She had a knack for the bad cop role …
‘Look,’ said Alastair in a final, take-it-or-leave-it voice, ‘this is a direct request from the Prime Minister. Is your answer yes or no?’
I instinctively looked towards Tony’s door to see whether he was listening …
‘If you need an answer right this second …’
‘Yes we do.’
‘Well then … I know it’s the end of my political career, but the answer is no.’
Alastair fired back without a moment’s hesitation. ‘It’s not the end of your political career, Oona. Just the next five years. You can go now.’
Oona King
Friday, 20 November 1998
Sunderland South
To a primary school in one of the more prosperous parts of the constituency to talk to a group of nine and ten year olds. I had gone prepared to talk about the environment, animal welfare and various other issues they had tipped me off about, but all they wanted to discuss was teenage gangs. It was amazing. One after another they told tales of bullying or violence at the hands of local yobs. One girl said she had been singled out for not wearing Reeboks. Another because she had been seen coming out of the library carrying books – books, for heaven’s sake. It was shocking the extent to which violence or the threat of it plays a part in their lives … Even the teachers were surprised.
Chris Mullin
Friday, 11 December 1998
Although the Tories talk tough on immigration, they left a backlog of 70,000 cases. I spoke to a civil servant who told me they were working flat out to clear the backlog. This civil servant also told me that they write letters to people saying the Home Secretary has ‘seen the correspondence.’ Apparently they wheel thousands of letters past his desk on a trolley. They trudge about with wheelbarrows full of letters, like bureaucratic gardeners. When the Home Secretary gives the wheelbarrow a once over, they can truthfully state that he has seen the correspondence. Or was that a joke? The apocryphal and the mundane blend together at the Home Office like absinthe. It blows your mind. When I visited the headquarters of the Immigration and Nationality directorate in Croydon, they took us into rooms the size of football pitches and showed us acres of correspondence.
Oona King
Wednesday, 16 December 1998
There were air raids in Baghdad just before ten.* I went off to Newsnight and there were Menzies Campbell and Michael Howard, and it was treated as a sort of spectacle – over to Baghdad to see the fires burning. I got very angry and I said, ‘Look, people are being killed as we are talking, and we are discussing it as if it is a spectator sport’ – it quite shook the panel. Then after one or two exchanges they tried to take my microphone from me and I said, ‘I’m not leaving the studio,’ so the discussion continued. I was unbelievably angry.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 2 January 1999
Gelston, Lincolnshire
Yesterday the single European currency, which many commentators in Britain said would never happen, went ahead but without the UK. It is arguably the biggest event on the European continent since the establishment of the Common Market in 1957 and, as usual, Britain is on the sidelines. We are likely to feel the impact of our self-imposed exclusion both economically and politically during 1999. The sooner we decide to go in the better. The coming of the euro and slowdown in the UK economy will be the big issues in British politics. Whether the global financial crisis, which was halted by the Fed, is really over is an open question. Obviously if things get worse internationally, that will have an impact on the UK economy. Hopefully we can escape without too sharp a downturn.
Giles Radice
Thursday, 21 January 1999
To the Home Office to see Gareth Williams, one of the unsung heroes of this government.
A couple of civil servants from the Prison Department gave a little presentation on the work they were doing to encourage prisoners to face up to their offending behaviour.
I asked why prisoners were allowed to paper their cells with degrading pictures of women when we were supposed to be encouraging them to treat women with respect. The men from Prisons hummed and hawed about censorship and where lines should be drawn … There was a bright, attractive young blonde woman present whom I at first assumed to be the minute-taker but she turned out to be a governor-grade prison officer who had recently joined Gareth’s office from Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution. Gareth asked her opinion and she said she had just drawn up a censorship policy at Feltham. Gareth asked her to consider a policy for the entire prison estate.
Chris Mullin
January 1999
Gone are the days when young people could be beaten – metaphorically – into submission. Legislation enhancing children’s rights, in particular the Children’s Act of 1989, has put an end to that. And beyond that, we’re living in a world where individuality, not conformity, is prized. Young people (and, by definition, young dancers) are encouraged to have a voice and to use it. Yet if the very essence of a corps de ballet is the unquestioning commitment and uniform approach of a mass of young people, then we’re heading towards a dilemma. The post-Thatcherite generation is anything but unquestioning and uniform.
Deborah Bull
London
In the evening an intriguing dinner at the French Embassy. The new ambassador, Daniel Bernard, had gathered together a heterogeneous collection of guests. They include Sir John Birt and Lady Birt, Mr and Mrs Richard Branson, the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, Terence Conran and partner, the Kuwaiti ambassador and his wife, Alastair Campbell and his partner, and Peter Mandelson. Lisanne [Radice] is seated next to the Ambassador and Richard Branson.
Peter is courageous to have come and he behaves with dignity.* I introduce Arsene Wenger, who also has many problems with the press, to him. Wenger who has a thin intelligent face says he was never more than an ordinary footballer but he is a first-class manager. ‘Managing a football team is like being a conjuror, you have so many balls to keep in the air – footballers, the board, the agents, the press, the fans,’ he explains. A bit like T. Blair?
Giles Radice
Wednesday, 10 February 1999
Parliamentary Committee
When we had finished going round the table, The Man said, a propos of nothing, ‘Shall I say a word about genetically modified food?’ He was, he said, keen to ensure that we didn’t overreact by launching into what he called ‘populist mode’. There were all sorts of genetic modifications that we wouldn’t wish to discourage. We wanted strict regulation and clear labelling, but we mustn’t be stampeded into rejecting genetic modification out of hand. He added that it was a big industry and there were a lot of jobs at stake.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but soon after we emerged from the meeting, I ran into Alan Simpson,† who said there were rumours that Bill Clinton had been leaning on The Man at the behest of Monsanto, which has already bought its way into the American political system and is no doubt burrowing away at ours. Jean Corston later asked Ian Gibson,* who knows a lot about genetic modification, how many jobs were involved in this country. ‘Very few,’ he replied. Curiouser and curiouser.
Chris Mullin
Thursday, 18 February 1999
10 Downing Street
Crazy week dominated by genetically modified food.
The main allegations are that we are rushing ahead too fast with GM food research and allowing ‘Frankenstein foods’ to be sold without being sure the technology is safe. It’s being claimed on extremely dubious grounds that GM foods could cause cancer, kill babies, turn vegetarians and the rest of us into cannibals, while GM crops will help wipe out other forms of life and contaminate non-GM crops. At the same time it is said the government is too close to the GM industry, too gung-ho about its potential, and that David Sainsbury, the science minister, has a conflict of interest because of his links to the family firm of supermarkets and his known enthusiasm for biotechnology in the past.
The week started with TB in a very feisty mood. He both alarmed and depressed David Miliband, whom I like and admire greatly, by suggesting that we should change direction on both health and education – allowing some treatments like varicose veins and cataracts to be taken out of the NHS and into private treatment. On education he was talking about closing down the Local Education Authorities altogether … the idea is that it’s time to think the unthinkable …
Lance Price
Wednesday, 24 February 1999
Jack Straw rang at lunchtime to tip me off about his statement on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.† He was scathing about the Met: ‘Incompetence on a grand scale. Makes your hair stand on end. You wonder what we pay these guys for.’ Paul Condon will be staying but it is clear that he has survived only by the skin of his teeth and on condition he eats a big helping of humble pie.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 17 March 1999
A long session with a Home Office minister about the chaos at the Immigration and Nationality Department. The papers have been full of horror stories about lost documents and queues which start forming before dawn. He says the problem started under the Tories, who signed up to a contract for a new computer system which hasn’t yet been delivered. The deadline has been extended, but even now it is still far from clear that the company concerned will deliver.
He added that about 80 per cent of public service computer contracts have gone wrong. This one has all the makings of a disaster, but it might still, just, work out. He wants [my Home Affairs Committee] to hold off from launching an enquiry until after the summer recess, by which time the outcome should be clear.
Chris Mullin
Saturday, 3 April 1999
The evening news shows Macedonia police beating back refugees. A huge convoy of misery stretches back ten miles into Kosovo. Exhausted desperate people pleading for help. The very old and the very young are beginning to die. What somehow makes it worse is that they look so like us. They have trainers and baby carriers and even cars. The Man was on TV this evening guaranteeing that they will return home one day. An empty promise.
Chris Mullin
Sunday, 4 April 1999
I am hugely depressed about Kosovo. Those loathsome, verminous gypsies; and the poor brave Serbs. The whole crisis is media-driven. Editors have no idea of or respect for the truth. They are concerned simply with scooping their rivals and/or pre-empting counter-scoops. But an orthodoxy of public indignation is built up, stoked up you could say, and the politicians have to respond …
I have spoken in the Commons debate, written in the Observer, been several times on television – but no one is interested.
Alan Clark
Friday, 16 April 1999
Bethnal Green and Bow
My constituency surgery this afternoon started at 2.30 pm and lasted six hours. As usual I saw loads of desperate people suffering the utmost misery. For the first time, I felt I couldn’t face writing all those letters which might have no effect at all. I looked at the woman across the desk, alone, petrified, disabled with lupus, clutching her crutches, tears smeared across her cheeks. Drowning but not crushed. No family, no friends, no money. Anthea’s only inheritance was a National Insurance number. Unlike Anthea, the socially included will never know their National Insurance number by heart. She was only twenty-one. How did she get here?
Oona King
Friday, 21 May 1999
Saltwood Castle
Talked this morning to ‘Dr Thomas Stuttaford’ (no, actually, I did) whom Jane brilliantly spotted as writing on depression. He v splendid, quick and almost reassuring. Said I could be dosed (there is a school of doctors who think in these terms) remedially with Serotonin. ‘Replenishes’ (sic) the brain. I don’t hugely like the sound of this.
Max [a tame jackdaw] is around, flies down benignly; a very different kind of presence. I give him didgys from the Early Morning Tea tin.
Alan Clark
Wednesday, 9 June 1999
In the evening I chaired a meeting on Agent Orange for the Britain–Vietnam Association. About twenty-five people attended, including a man from Monsanto, one of the companies which used to make the stuff. We were addressed by Hugh Warwick an ecologist, and then watched a video showing the horrendous birth defects that are alleged to have resulted [from the US spraying crops with defoliant in the Vietnam War] … the victims were mainly poor peasants living in utter poverty.
The war in Kosovo seems to be over. The Serbs finally put their thumbprints on a timetable for withdrawal at around nine o’clock this evening.
The first contingent of troops under General Mike Jackson is expected to go in tomorrow.
Chris Mullin
Monday, 14 June 1999
Westminster
Go on the Today programme to comment on Labour’s appalling results in the European parliamentary elections. We end up with 29 seats to the Tories’ 36. I say that our campaign was ‘abysmal’ and that we had no strategy or organisation. We provided no reason at all for our voters to turn out. By contrast, Hague, though making no converts, was able to mobilise his Euro-sceptic Tory vote. The result is not only bad for Labour but also for pro-Europeans …
But how are we to turn public opinion if [Blair and Brown] continue to keep their heads down?
Giles Radice
Wednesday, 14 July 1999
Gordon Brown addressed the party meeting. Never has a Labour Chancellor had such a good story to tell and Gordon made the most of it. Unemployment at a twenty year low; inflation down to 1960s levels, oodles of money being pumped into the public sector. And, coming shortly, the Working Families Tax Credit which will make the lowest paid families up to £60 a week better off.
These days Gordon exudes an aura of competence and self-confidence which, in opposition, he lacked. At last, a Labour Chancellor who is not at the mercy of events.
Chris Mullin
Visited Jonathan Aitken at Stanford Hill Prison. It is a good twelve miles from the station [and] my ever more valued friend Andrew met me at Maidstone.
Jonathan is studying for his theological degree with the possibility of becoming a clergyman. He wakes at five every morning and spends the next two hours in prayer and Bible reading. So we all had a good religious confabulation.
Jonathan told us he has a prayer partner, a Roman Catholic. Although he is an Anglican, Jonathan recently became godfather to his prayer partner’s baby. At the end Jonathan delivered a wonderful prayer and I did my best in turn.
He certainly has an electric quality similar to Tony Blair.
Lord Longford
Friday, 10 September 1999
I have been granted the pre-conference interview with the Leader of the Opposition. (Perhaps no one else wanted it?) I went to see him at Central Office in Smith Square.
I had a good hour with William [Hague], but I came away with nothing. Seb (who sat in attendance at the interview with the glossy-lipped Amanda Platell)* claims his boss is ‘the most qualified man who ever wanted to be Prime Minister’. Denis Healey says he’s a twerp. I reckon the Whitelaw maxim may be nearer the mark. William is 38, a considerable achiever, likeable, clear-headed, quick-witted, rational, reasonable, intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, shrewd. But something’s missing. I was impressed, I wasn’t moved. I was charmed but not inspired. In theatrical terms, he is a first-class leading man; he knows the lines, he won’t bump into the furniture, he’ll never miss a performance. But he isn’t a star in the way Blair is. He won’t be Prime Minister. (Foreign Secretary perhaps, twenty years from now, in our next administration.)
Gyles Brandreth
Last weekend, in an Observer interview, TB called for a new ‘moral purpose’ in Britain. It was totally vacuous and was made up just to give us a good story after two twelve year old girls were found to have got themselves pregnant. But it worked and gave us a good talking point for several days until Alan Clark’s death.*
Lance Price
Tuesday, 14 September 1999
Lunch with the British Airports Authority top brass, who included Des Wilson, founder of the homeless charity Shelter. It was preceded by a briefing which revealed that demand for air services is growing at an astonishing rate, especially in the south-east which accounts for about 80 per cent of traffic (although none of them want an airport in their backyard, of course). By 2015, even assuming that terminal five is built at Heathrow, all the main airports will be choked to capacity with no prospect of further expansion. Until now it seems to have been a case of Predict and Provide. Exactly the mess we have got ourselves into with the motor car. Sooner or later politicians are going to have to pluck up the courage to call a halt. Needless to say the airport fraternity won’t be satisfied until they have concreted over every blade of grass. Des Wilson (once a great radical, now a corporate fat cat) seemed to think that the right to cheap holidays took precedence over all other considerations. He bleated about all the business we would lose. So be it. One day we shall have to go back to being peasants. There are times when I think it can’t come soon enough.
Chris Mullin
Monday, 27 September–Wednesday, 29 September 1999
Labour Party Conference, Bournemouth
[Gordon Brown] promises ‘Socialism, credible and radical’, ending child poverty and getting rid of unemployment. And he ends by saying that ‘We have only just begun.’ He gets a rapturous standing ovation.
Tuesday is Tony Blair’s turn – he makes a good speech which he spoils by going over the top at the end. He says that the old-style class war is over but the struggle for new-style equality – giving everyone an opportunity – has only just begun.
But the finale is over the top: ‘And now at last, party and nation are joined in the same cause for the same purpose: to set our people free.’ Who needs bishops when you have got Tony Blair?
Giles Radice
Thursday, 14 October 1999
Ministerial visit to Liverpool
Our first call was the Housing Action Trust set up by the Tories to take over a huge slice of Liverpool’s worst public housing which the city council was incapable of managing. Most of the Trust’s 67 tower blocks are in the process of being demolished and replaced with good quality low rise. It was given a huge sum of money – £260 million – and told to get on with it. Needless to say there was a lot of squealing from Derek Hatton and friends,* but from what I saw it’s a great success. I can’t remember what Old Labour’s line on Housing Action Trusts was, but I bet we were opposed. Something else the Tories were right about.
Liverpool City Council, now run by Liberals, has seen the light and is getting out of housing management. We visited two other estates. One which had been handed over to a housing association and transformed and one which was just about to be. On one we witnessed two large black dogs attacking a villainous looking youth while the owner, another obvious villain, was trying to get them under control. Afterwards the villain who had been attacked beat one of the dogs soundly with a belt. I was later told that the dogs were Neapolitans, which are said to be fiercer than Rottweilers. The villain apparently owned six. As one of my hosts remarked, ‘You can’t accuse us of stage-managing your visit.’
Chris Mullin
Philip Gould analysed our problem very clearly. We don’t know what we are. Gordon wants us to be a radical, progressive government but thinks we should keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe. Philip didn’t say this, but I think TB either can’t make up his mind or wants to be both at the same time.
Lance Price
Tuesday, 30 November 1999
A historic day. At about 11.00 the Commons vote through the order returning powers to Stormont. The peace process is at last beginning to roll, thanks to the patience of George Mitchell* and the courage of David Trimble. David Trimble has faced down the hardline Ulster Unionists and received their backing of his party for setting up the Northern Ireland Executive. Now it is up to Sinn Fein and the IRA to deliver on decommissioning.
Giles Radice
Friday, 31 December 1999
Millennium Eve. We queued for hours. The police and London Underground apologised for any inconvenience caused by the unexpectedly large crowds. How could the crowds be unexpected? It was the Millennium. Although the police knew 10,000 people would be travelling to the Dome via Stratford Station, they only brought one X-ray machine.
Oona King
Saturday, 1 January 2000
A new century. My grandchildren, who I hope to survive long enough to meet, will live into the twenty second century. What kind of world will they inherit? The planet is in a worse state now than at any time in my life. Beyond fortress Europe and North America much of the world is in meltdown. In Africa there are countries where all civilised life has collapsed. Afghanistan has returned to barbarism. The Balkans are in turmoil and even as I write the Russians are bombing Chechnya into the stone age. Already refugees from the chaos are placing strains on the political and social fabric of the developed world that may in due course become unbearable. We should not imagine as we sit smug behind our increasingly fortified frontiers that our civilisation can survive unscathed.
Our main problem of course, is not other people’s wars. It is that we have invented an economic system which is consuming the resources of the planet as if there were no tomorrow – and there might not be unless we change our ways. In the United States, the home of the world’s most voracious consumers, there is no sign at all that the political process is capable of persuading – or indeed has any desire to persuade – citizens to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. All over the democratic world, politicians increasingly follow rather than lead. And even if an ecological disaster were to occur (perhaps it has already begun) the price will be paid by those least responsible and least capable of protecting themselves. Indeed the consumers of the developed world may not even notice. To crown it all, the emerging economies of Asia are falling over themselves to emulate the mistakes that we have made. Indeed they insist that it is their right to do so.
Maybe, just maybe, this will be the century in which we learn to reduce, reuse and recycle our waste, develop benign sources of food and energy and stop burning up the ozone layer. Maybe Europe will lead the way and others will follow. Who knows, there ought to be money to be made out of going green, in which case capitalism will enjoy a new lease of life.
Or maybe it is too late.
Chris Mullin
Monday, 12 January 2000
At 3.30 we had a statement by Jack Straw explaining why he was going to let Pinochet go.* I got in a question comparing the wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia, when innocent people were killed and it was justified on humanitarian grounds, with the release of a torturer on humanitarian grounds. The ‘ethical foreign policy’ is finished. I was the only person who spoke against it.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 21 January 2000
Tennis at Queen’s with Ann [Spicer] and Malcolm Pearson. Malcolm still flirting with UKIP. Nigel Farage rings him to say for £2 million he will call off candidates in some seats, including mine. I tell him (again) – don’t touch them.*
Michael Spicer
Thursday, 3 February 2000
Gordon is still diddling around. We discovered via the Telegraph, that he’s planning a tour of ‘heartland’ areas. He’s also doing a speech on Britishness, trying to argue that despite devolution etc., being British still means something. It also helps portray New Labour as ‘patriotic’ and defends us a bit from the European arguments we’ll face at the election.
Lance Price
Friday, 31 March 2000
How about this for a piece of new Labour claptrap?
Dear Chris
I am writing to give you advance notice that Sunderland is one of the local authority areas we have identified to be part of an enlarged Excellence in Cities (EIC) programme … I don’t have to tell you what good news this is … In the next few weeks we shall be asking schools and authorities to form partnerships to develop EIC plans. These will create new patterns of provision – Beacon and Specialist schools; small Education Action Zones; school-based city learning centres; learning mentors and enriched opportunities for gifted and talented children.
Best wishes
David Blunkett
Goodness knows what all this means, although I am sure it is all terribly worthy. No wonder the teachers are so bewildered.
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 2 May 2000
There was a statement today by Jack Straw about the demonstration in London yesterday, which I should have reported. At the TUC May Day demonstration 15,000 people marched on Trafalgar Square (there was not a word on the BBC about that). The news concentrated on two or three incidents that occurred in the anti-capitalist demonstration. First of all, the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square was daubed and someone put a slice of turf on Churchill’s head so that it looked like a Mohican haircut; and then the Cenotaph was daubed with graffiti. And somebody smashed McDonald’s in Victoria Street. Of course that’s what the television cameras were waiting for – and they just covered it and covered it.
The BBC is not remotely interested in an argument abut globalisation or capitalism; they’re only interested in trouble, and of course that means that if you want coverage you make trouble.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 18 May 2000
On the train from Oxford
Ed Balls is on the train.
He congratulates me on my pamphlet on the euro and says that the decision on entry will be made in the new parliament. I get the impression from Ed Balls that for Gordon Brown winning a third term (and thus ensuring his premiership) is more important than entering the euro, so Gordon will be extremely cautious about joining.
Giles Radice
Linger over dinner in the Members’ dining room with John Major. I say to him at one point, ‘Historians will puzzle over where you really stood on Maastricht.’ He smiles and makes no audible response. I suppose that is how he became Prime Minister in the first place.
Michael Spicer
Monday, 17 July 2000
The Murdoch press has got hold of a memorandum, dated April 29, written by The Man himself which is, to put it mildly, embarrassing. For a man whose greatest strength is his ability to think long term it is remarkably shallow and short term. There is an air of panic running through it. He focuses on five issues – the Martin case,* asylum, crime, defence and the family. ‘These things add up to a sense that the Government – and this even applies to me – are somehow out of touch with gut British instincts.’ He goes on to call for ‘eye-catching initiatives’. Example: ‘Locking up street muggers … something tough with immediate bite.’ (No doubt this is the origin of Jack Straw’s nasty little bill, to mete out rough justice to football hooligans, that is currently keeping us up half the night.) Needless to say the Tories and the media are having great fun. It is another spectacular own goal.
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 12 September 2000
Astonishingly, we are now in the middle of a national crisis. Panic buying has led to most petrol stations (operating on a ‘just in time’ basis) rapidly running dry. People are saying, ‘What are the government doing about it?’ Tony Blair, who has cancelled all his engagements, says that he will not give in to blackmail (it is not clear what the blockaders are asking for – a special deal for hauliers? A cut in our stiff fuel taxes? Help for farmers?)† and that, having consulted the oil companies, things will be beginning to get back to normal in ‘twenty four hours.’ This last commitment seems a hostage to fortune …
Giles Radice
Wednesday, 20 September 2000
Lord Melchett, the executive director of Greenpeace, and the Greenpeace demonstrators were released after being acquitted in court or criminal damage against a genetically modified crop, which they said might pollute neighbouring fields.
Even the media is beginning to notice the fact that politics is now the politics of the streets. That’s where all political ideas begin and they end up in Parliament, so there’s nothing very strange about it.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 26 September 2000
Labour Party Conference, Brighton
Possibly my last as an MP.
Labour conferences have changed greatly. Today, they are big business with visitors, the media and lobbyists of one sort or another greatly outnumbering the delegates. They’re now much more showcases for party leaders than party conferences where policy is decided. They are usually far less dramatic than they were when party members were at each others’ throats. But at least they help rather than hinder the party’s standing with the voters.
Looking much older than the fresh-faced young Lochinvar who first spoke to Conference as leader in 1994, Blair begins by admitting mistakes on the Dome and the paltry 75p [old age] pensions’ increase. On the Dome, he says: ‘If I had my time again I would have listened to those who said that governments shouldn’t try to run big visitor attractions.’ On the fuel crisis he says that he is listening. But he is also listening about underfunding in the NHS and education. ‘The test of leadership in politics is not how eloquently you say Yes. It’s how you explain why you’re saying No …’ Lots of cheers.
Giles Radice
A wonderful day. The Yugoslavs liberate themselves from Milosevic.
As in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and East Germany, the people have won. What has happened in Belgrade today completes the democratic revolution in Europe begun in Poland in 1989. The storming of the Parliament in Belgrade joins the unforgettable image – the day the Berlin Wall came down, the great crowds in Wenceslas Square in Prague, the savagery in the streets of Bucharest. A great day for Serbia and for Europe!
Giles Radice
Friday, 6 October 2000
Blair’s made a big speech in Poland in which he says the European Union must be a superpower but not a super-state, which is a typical spin doctor’s phrase. What the hell does it mean? A superpower has nuclear weapons. Is Europe going to have nuclear weapons?
He wants to enlarge the EU within four years to include Eastern Europe, and that will no doubt mean Serbia. It’s quite obvious that a development is in progress that will obliterate democracy.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 24 October–Friday, 27 October 2000
Treasury Select Committee visit to the USA
The next day at Washington we are received by Alan Greenspan. Received is the right word, as Greenspan has become an almost mythical presence.
We note that Greenspan has, perhaps unwisely, abandoned some of the central banker’s inherent caution. He has now joined Abby Cohen as one of the believers in the American ‘productivity’ miracle. Further growth, high asset and stock prices are justified by a basic technological shift. Of course he points out that the fundamentals of economics have not changed and says that there could even be a pronounced downturn. Whether the US upsurge proves in the end to be soundly based or more likely a South Sea bubble, Greenspan remains for now a colossus before whom either George W Bush or Al Gore will have to abase himself.
Giles Radice
Saturday, 4 November 2000
The doctors saw Caroline today and helped to relieve her pain.*
I realised what an international world we live in. Beatrice, who comes in the morning as a district nurse, is from Nigeria, and there’s another nurse from Australia. Irene Chan is a Malaysian Chinese. When Caroline went in last time to Hospital, George Lee, the surgeon, was himself a Chinese from Singapore. His boss, the consultant, is Mr Patel, who’s an Indian. We’ve had carers from the Philippines, from St Vincent, from Kenya, from Hungary. We are part of a world community.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 8 November 2000
I went to bed last night after early exit polls predicted that Al Gore had won Florida – and therefore the presidency. I woke up this morning to the horrific news that Florida swung the other way and George W Bush is President. The news is so bad, so abominable that nothing can make it better. I feel truly sickened. The leader of the free world is a moron, and the future of the world hangs in the balance.
Oona King
Thursday, 21 December 2000
Department of Employment, Transport and the Regions
Today I saved the taxpayer £1.5 million. Officials came to me with a plan for yet more research into the effect of aircraft noise on sleep. ‘What’s the point?’ I asked. ‘Whatever the conclusions, you are still going to tell me that nothing can be done about night flights.’ I refused to authorise any more research. They weren’t at all happy and no doubt as soon as I am out of the door, they will put it under the nose of whoever succeeds me. Nevertheless, I felt for once that I had done something useful.
Also, I finally managed to wring out of officials in the Aviation Division details of the number of airline employees who have passes to the Department. I obviously touched a raw nerve because I had to ask half a dozen times over a period of several weeks. The answer is that, between them, British Airways, Virgin and British Midland have ten passes and the charter airlines have another four. I’m not sure there is anything very wicked about it, but the fact that merely asking the question proves so upsetting for officials makes me wonder.
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 9 January 2001
Crashed [the new car] on the way home. I can’t explain how distressing it was … the first time I drove it. I never crashed the banger once in eight years.
Tiberio was standing with the light on in the bedroom looking out, and he’d been waiting for me three hours. I had such a bad feeling. He calmly told me he wanted to leave me, because he’d had enough of waiting for me all night, of me never being home because I was at the House of Commons, because I was married to the constituency not to him. I said, ‘What, you’re going to leave me because I crashed the car? I’m really sorry I crashed the car but give me a break.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘this is how I felt during the whole holiday, this is how I’ve felt for the past year.’
It boils down to this: he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t have a life with me, and he wants a partner who is a partner, not a ghost. He is going to find out if his office can move him to Italy, and if that happens we should separate.
Westminster isn’t life. Some sad people make it their life entirely. But it’s not. There’s nothing there, beyond the chandeliers and the bars and the men in tights. It’s not somewhere you want to live, and that’s the worst thing about this job; you’re forced to live there. It’s a posh boarding school with crap food.
Oona King
House of Commons
[I] tell Gordon Brown about my decision (to stand down). Gordon is very charming, as he can be in private, but would clearly prefer me to stay.
He is fascinated by my Crosland, Jenkins and Healey book (Friends and Rivals), obviously seeing its relevance to the Blair–Brown relationship. ‘Despite all the difficulties you and Tony are bound together by hoops of steel.’ Gordon doesn’t contradict me, though he says it is ‘complicated’. Half-jokingly I threaten to write a book about Tony and Gordon. ‘We are not going to end in failure, like your heroes,’ predicts Gordon.
Today is also the day of the Hunting Bill. I am a very ‘reluctant abolitionist.’ I think hunting is barbaric but I remain worried by the liberty issue. The abolitionist position gets a large majority, though it will be blocked in the Lords. So ends a traumatic day. I have two strong whiskies with Charles Clarke in the Smoking Room.
Giles Radice
Tuesday, 6 February 2001
To a meeting addressed by a retired American admiral called Gene Carroll; he’d come over specially to help with the campaign against the proposed US National Missile Defense System (‘Star Wars’). The Admiral said that the Star Wars programme was unnecessary and costly. There was no enemy; it was easy to deliver weapons to the United States, and you could attack New York using a Panamanian ship with a bomb in the hold. He said that the American policy was now ‘layered defence’ – that is to say, defence at every level – and that laser weapons could be in permanent orbit, which could shoot down other missiles and satellites and could pinpoint and destroy Earth targets; if this happened the United States would totally dominate space and indeed would dominate the world.
He did also say that fear of China was a dominant consideration. ‘There is no enemy facing the United States but fear of China is a real fear.’ There were huge profits to be made by Boeing, Lockheed and Raytheon and that was really what it was about.
Tony Benn
Going into Settle this morning we pass a lorry at Austwick loaded with the carcasses of slaughtered sheep* and find the main car park now given over to vehicles, bulldozers and all the paraphernalia of this dreadful travelling circus. Though for the soldiers and the slaughtermen the work must now be just a wearisome routine, cars still slow to watch the mound of carcasses slither down the ramps and it’s hard not to think it’s but a step from this to the more terrible slaughters that go on in Eastern Europe.
Alan Bennett
Thursday, 31 May 2001
To Doxford International, to visit One2One, a mobile telephone call centre, employing 1,200 people. Doxford is a big success. Altogether 7,500 people are employed there, mainly in jobs that didn’t exist ten years ago, some in industries that didn’t exist – mobile phones for example. Their fathers and grandfathers worked in shipyards and coal mines and they have graduated to computer screens. For all the sneers that call centres attract from metropolitan journalists, I doubt whether a single one of those employed there would trade his computer for the coalface.
I was shown around by a tall, Hispanic-looking man who appeared to come from another planet. His opening words were, ‘What do you hope to get out of the next half hour?’ He spoke a language with which I am unfamiliar using words like ‘skill-sets’ and ‘functionality’; his workers were divided into ‘communities.’ Overhead a banner proclaimed that this or that community had won this month’s award for ‘A monopoly of Excellence.’
Chris Mullin
Worcestershire West
Polling night is, in the words of the young, ‘really scary’. Torbay falls early on to Liberals with a swing of 8 per cent and Guildford goes later with a swing of 4.5 pr cent; these swings would have ended me …
Ann and I arrive at [my count] shaking a bit. Wonderful surprise to find Edward there [the Spicers’ son]; he has come out of the blue to give support in the event that disaster strikes. As it happens, get a pro-Tory swing of 2.5 per cent rather against the national trend, especially to Liberals.
Michael Spicer
Thursday, 19 July 2001
Home on the 20.00. I sat with David Davis* as far as Doncaster. We discussed the Tory leadership election. He thinks Iain Duncan Smith will win easily. Clarke, he says, would be absolutely untenable given his views on Europe. Portillo, he says, would have lost anyway. ‘No one trusts him.’
He is confident that we will make a mess of reforming the NHS. What’s needed, he says, is a mixed economy with some hospitals handed over completely to the private sector, and we will never dare do that.
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 4 September 2001
There are mass redundancies in the electronics industry – Marconi, Hewlett Packard, Compaq – all over the world. I’ve never wanted to believe there was a slump coming because, although socialists are supposed to welcome the collapse of capitalism, I know perfectly well it ends up with right-wing politics, and indeed already the argument over the asylum-seekers is getting more and more bitter. David Blunkett is complaining to the French that they are setting up another refugee camp near the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar. We are recruiting teachers from Eastern Europe to fill the gap in our schools … It is becoming like a jungle. I am getting discouraged.
There’s a new Education White Paper out today, which calls for more religious schools. Religious schools, at a time when all that is going on in Northern Ireland is absolutely mad!
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 11 September 2001
Convalescing in Newick, East Sussex
Two engineers arrived this morning to install ONdigital for me in time for the match [Arsenal v Real Mallorca].
I lay on the sofa as Grande [grandmother] prepared a nice pizza for lunch.
Just after two the Mirror newsdesk called and said the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. I switched to Sky and saw a small plume of smoke coming out of one of the twin towers. Just seemed like a tragic accident. ‘Keep an eye on it, but it looks like a light aircraft to me, which is a tragedy but not a huge story over here.’
I carried on watching and about twenty minutes later the presenter Kay Burley said we were watching footage of the plane actually hitting the tower, from Fox News.
Only we weren’t. She very quickly realised this was live and we had seen a second plane hit the other tower. ‘We saw it – we saw it! That was a big plane, this isn’t an accident, it can’t be.’
I looked back at the screen. A huge ball of flame was coming out of the second tower, and Sky were already speculating about terrorism.
Dad came in to see how I was … We both watched in horror.
Then one of the ONdigital engineers asked if he could switch channels to test the football output.
‘No, no, can’t you see – the twin towers have been hit. Thousands of people work in there.’
Grande arrived with my pizza. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go,’ I said and hobbled slowly upstairs to find a suit.
Piers Morgan
Driving up the M40 Jessica, my secretary, rings to tell me about the terrorist attacks in America.
Drive straight to Central Office. Mood is hardening to postpone everything [the Conservative Party leadership election]. I am moving to this view as the ghastliness of the whole business unfolds. It’s Pearl Harbour without a known enemy …
Talk to Hague, then to Clarke and Duncan Smith; we reach an agreement that Hague will make low-key announcement of a 24-hour delay in the count. I put out a message on the pager to colleagues.
Michael Spicer
Thursday, 13 September 2001
London
TB’s worry was that GWB [George Bush] would turn inwards … He felt now was the time to bind in as much international support as possible. He felt a big military hit combined with a big international effort of support and long-term agenda for terrorism was the way to go … TB was quite troubled afterwards [following a phone call with Bush], said we had to think of a way of getting to the US for a face-to-face meeting. He said he needed to see him in a room, and look in his eyes, not do all this on phone calls with 15 people listening in. TB went through his assessment of the US plan – ultimatum to yield up OBL [Osama bin Laden] and then let outside body move in to get rid of camps. Alternatively, hit OBL straight away, possibly going for the Taliban. And the next step is to look to other countries, including Iraq, and other countries not even linked to OBL. He said their instinct was to resolve the WMD question quickly. We need to consider what such a strategy would be and what part we would play in it … Geoff [Hoon, Defence Secretary] said [Donald] Rumsfeld had been looking for reasons to hit Iraq. They definitely wanted regime change and that was the channel of advice Bush has been getting since the election. Jack [Straw] said they would be mad to do Iraq without justification because they will lose world opinion. TB said ‘My job is to try to steer them in a sensible path.’ He said we had to separate these two missions. He said their line of argument will be that it does not matter whether you did the Trade Centre, if you are in the business of terrorism, then we are going to put you out of business. It’s possible to be sympathetic to that but the political consequences are all too obvious.
Alastair Campbell
Monday, 24 September 2001
Several of today’s papers carry a picture of about twenty westernised Arab youngsters, boys and girls, in front of a pink Cadillac. Everyone looks happy and relaxed. Ringed, in the middle row, is a thin young man in a green skinny rib jumper and flared purple trousers. He is happy, too. This is Osama bin Laden and some of his many brothers and sisters, on holiday in Sweden, 30 years ago. In those far off days, before the earth changed places with the sky. Before everything went so terribly, terribly wrong.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 26 September 2001
Tower Hamlets
People are saying the whole world will come to a standstill; the airline industry will shut down, the tourist industry will collapse, an industry relying on travel – a key component of globalisation – will fall apart. September 11th will trigger a depression like that of the 1930s. The days of milk and honey are over. I don’t think they were ever here. But September 11th marks a change: because of this new terrorism there is now the prospect of arbitrary death for a minuscule number of people in the West. Before, arbitrary death was mainly inflicted upon vast numbers of poor people in developing countries.
Oona King
Thursday, 4 October 2001
Recall of Parliament
Everyone knows that we were being recalled to discuss a military assault on the Taliban to close down the use of Afghanistan as a base for world terror.
There was no doubt today that [the House’s] mood was one of overwhelming resolve to take necessary action against Al-Qaida … The very Members who would normally have reservations about military action are also those who are most respectful of international cooperation. Today they found it impossible flatly to resist military action, given the impressive global coalition that has been assembled against the Taliban and the clear mandate of the United Nations.
Robin Cook
Friday, 26 October 2001
Livingston, Scotland
A day in the constituency. The only tricky bit of the day was the visit to my local mosque. You are always left at a psychological disadvantage on these visits. First they take your shoes away, which leaves those of us from another culture feeling vulnerable. Then you have to remain standing because there is not a chair in sight across the wide expanse of the mosque carpet. Finally you are entirely surrounded by a circle of the community elders, each of whom can count on total solidarity from everyone else encircling you.
As always there was good humour in the discussion … For all that, they were unanimously against the military action in Afghanistan. The fundamental problem is that it is not perceived as a targeted campaign against terrorists or the Taliban, but a war against the people of Afghanistan.
Robin Cook
Tuesday, 13 November 2001
Home Affairs Select Committee in Manchester
A morning visiting drugs projects. Everywhere we asked people what they would do and most, but by no means all, replied that they would move towards decriminalising, starting with heroin. One of the most vehement was a police superintendent, another a Methodist minister. Decriminalisation, of course, would bring its own problems. One woman said, ‘I worry that we shall become as complacent towards drugs as we are towards alcohol.’ GPs will not be keen to have addicts shooting up in their surgeries. There would also be a problem with leakage – prescribed drugs finding their way into the black market. We talked to a couple of addicts, one of whom had just come back from Germany, where he said they have ‘shooting galleries’. Safe houses where heroin can be injected in private and needles properly disposed of, instead of being left around in streets.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 14 November 2001
Kabul has fallen, along with Jalalabad and Herat. Our new friends in the Northern Alliance are rolling up the map with hardly a shot being fired. The Man made a statement. He did it very well. There was no triumphalism although he must be mightily relieved. No one expected this. A week ago there was talk on all sides that the war would last all winter and now it could be over in a matter of days.
Chris Mullin
Saturday, 1 December 2001
Got a taxi to the Albert Hall for the Bootleg Beatles. Stephen [Benn] had got tickets for the whole family, bless his old heart. He’s so efficient! It was a fabulous performance, and it has been a huge success … the audience stood up and cheered and waved their hands – a lot of middle-aged people, I was probably one of the very oldest people there. There were also a lot of young people, who seemed to enjoy it just as much.
Just before I go to bed – there’s been a huge suicide bomb in Jerusalem, 130 people injured or killed, and this violence goes on and on and on, on both sides, and the argument that the other side only understands force is what the Americans are saying about the Al Qaeda, what the Islamic Jihad say about the Israelis, and at some stage, you do really have to think of some other way of solving problems.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 15 January 2002
To the Wilson Room in Portcullis House to hear Jack Straw, who had just come from talking to Colin Powell about America’s treatment of the Taliban prisoners.* ‘I told Powell, “This isn’t doing America any good.” He understands.’
Afterwards I remarked to Jack that, although political realities dictated that we had to be nice to him we should never lose sight of the fact that George Bush and the Republican Party represented – I was going to say, ‘some of the meanest, greediest, most selfish people on the planet’, but Jack finished the sentence for me: ‘a bunch of bastards.’
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 13 February 2002
Had a terrible problem with my electricity supply. London Electricity came to cut me off saying I’d transferred to npower. I said I hadn’t. I rang npower, but they didn’t know anything about it. I rang London Electricity, they gave me a reference number. I rang npower again, they said it was a mistake. I rang London Electricity back, and they said this happens two or three times a day in London. What an outrage it is!
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 19 February 2002
Sunderland
In the company of management I toured the Dewhirst Menswear factories at Hendon and Pennywell. Row after row of women in yellow smocks sitting at machines which ingeniously cut, stitch, press and iron in accordance with instructions from a computer. The end result of which is six thousand Marks & Spencer suits a week. The problem, which no amount of scientific organisation can avert, is that the same skills are available in Morocco for a fifth of the price and in China for, who knows – a tenth? Now M&S has bowed to the inevitable. Result: a question mark hangs over the entire Dewhirst operation. ‘We are staring at a black hole,’ said John Haley, the managing director. They are desperately trying to diversify. The only practical option is America, where there is a market for volume menswear. The only problem is that the home of free trade imposes a 23 percent tariff on textile imports from the UK. So much for the special relationship.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 27 February 2002
I scrambled to catch the Eurostar to a meeting of the PES [Party of European Socialists] and steamed into two growing storm clouds for Britain over the Channel. The first arises from the Blair–Berlusconi summit in Rome which has provoked uproar in the Italian left and their close sympathisers in the Mediterranean countries. It doesn’t help that Berlusconi hailed this as a new ‘Anglo-Italian axis’ … It is preposterous to sign a joint declaration celebrating liberalisation of the economy with a man who has just hobbled the courts in case they imagine that liberalisation and the rule of law applies to his companies.
The other problem rests in deep anxiety about what George Bush intends to do around the world, and that problem will increase as he gets on with it. There is particular concern tonight about the possibility that he will take action against Iraq. I share the deep concerns about how quickly the United States has moved from building a global coalition against terror, to reverting to a unilateralist foreign policy.
Robin Cook
Saturday, 30 March 2002
My 37th birthday and I was looking forward to spending a night’s entertainment in the fleshpots of London when a phone call came through [from the Mirror] mid-afternoon saying the Queen Mother had died. I wish I could say my first reaction was to bow my head and pay silent tribute to Her Majesty for all she’d done for this country in her amazing life, before racing to the newsroom.
But all I could think was that she had died on a Saturday. Every single royal who has died in my lifetime – Diana, Margaret and now the Queen Mother – died on a Saturday. Which means a third beautifully crafted supplement disappearing into the bin. The number of hours that go into these things can’t be overstated – thousands over the years, constantly updating and revising. All gone, because the Sundays have enough time to do their own, that they too will have carefully worked on for decades.
A sad day though; she was a wonderful old bird. ‘Never explain, never complain and never speak in public,’ she used to say. And that’s how she got away with a constant £4 million overdraft and extravagant lunch parties every day, yet still the public loved her.
Piers Morgan
Tuesday, 16 April 2002
Good ‘1992’ dinner. Everyone very supportive of Liam Fox view of NHS: must break up state monopoly and give purchasing power to consumer. Sit next to the doughty Ann Winterton. She is determined that we are going to press for renegotiation of the Treaty of Rome re fisheries. We must support her.
Michael Spicer
Wednesday, 1 May 2002
Andrew MacKinlay dropped a little bombshell at this afternoon’s meeting of the parliamentary committee. Apparently, under the Freedom of Information Act, by January 2005 Members’ expenses will be subject to public scrutiny, retrospectively. Goodness knows what mayhem that will cause. ‘We are in a jam,’ said Robin Cook [Leader of the House]. ‘Few members have yet tumbled to the juggernaut heading their way.’
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 16 July 2002
Daily Mirror
Gordon Brown made a tremendous pre-Budget speech yesterday that many believed signalled the start of his charge to Number 10. At the same time a brilliant picture of a large elephant tossing a baby elephant with its trunk came in. So I splashed on that picture with an inset of Brown towering over Blair in the Commons and the headline PACK YOUR TRUNK TONY, I’M IN CHARGE. It was only when I looked at it this morning that I realised it was a ridiculous page that didn’t work on any level at all, other than in my weird little mind. It’s embarrassing.
Rebekah married Ross Kemp last month in Las Vegas and it’s their wedding party tomorrow night. He’s an amusing guy, much brighter and more amusing than Grant Mitchell.*
Piers Morgan
Wednesday, 24 July 2002
The stock market has been plunging all day. ‘Spare a thought for those of us who were told we had to sell our house and put the proceeds into equities,’ remarked The Man as we assembled for the parliamentary committee this afternoon. He said it with feeling. As well he might. He has been well and truly shafted. Equities have plummeted, house prices have soared. That one disastrous piece of official advice has probably lost him more in five years than he’s earned as prime minister.
My views on new airports sparked a spirited exchange.† I said, ‘During my 18 undistinguished months as Aviation minister I learned two things about the aviation industry. One, that its demands are insatiable. Two, that successive governments have always given way.’ I continued, ‘There is nothing wrong with expanding regional airports, providing we insist that they are accessible by public transport, but as far as London and the South East is concerned, isn’t it time we made a stand?’
There were no takers. The Man said something about bigger and better airports being essential for the health of the economy. Doug Hoyle said that the second runway had made a big difference in Manchester. Tony Lloyd said that airports in the regions benefited from investment in the south-east.
Liz Symons said, ‘As Minister for Trade, I’m quite worried about what Chris has said.’
‘Have you been on the cannabis again, Chris?’ inquired JP [John Prescott] to general hilarity.
‘I can see I won’t be allowed anywhere near the transport department again,’ I said.
Chris Mullin
Post still high despite it being the holiday period. People write all the year round these days. Tories still getting consistently bad press … Battle between so-called modernisers (‘mods’), whose mantra seems to focus on more women candidates and to welcome minority groups, and the ‘rockers’ who say what we want is a re-establishment of our identity/principles – choice, small state, decentralisation of decisions and appropriate policies (health insurance, low taxes etc.).
Michael Spicer
Tuesday, 3 September 2002
Blair gave a press conference at Sedgefield at 2.30, lasting for an hour and a half, in which, not to put too fine a point upon it, he said he had the evidence and – well, he declared war on Iraq on behalf of Britain in support of America. Totally riddled with error, and he was standing there smirking and smiling. You’d think he’d just done something very clever. But there’s no doubt whatever that there will be a war, probably in the New Year.
The war plans are now well advanced.
Tony Benn
Monday, 21 October 2002
Conservative board meeting. Everyone says how wonderful the Conference was and we must have more self-flagellation. Bumped into Eric Forth afterwards: he seems to think a leadership challenge may be on the way.
Michael Spicer
Friday, 6 December 2002
According to the Daily Mail, Cherie Blair is dabbling in the occult and cannot decide whether to have tea or coffee in the morning without consulting a medium in Dorking called Sylvia. Mrs Blair surrounds herself with gurus and mystics. It seems you cannot move in No 10 before tripping over crystals and astrological charts.
Marigold said, ‘It’s good to know that someone of the New Age is married to the most powerful person in Britain.’
Adrian Mole
Wednesday, 29 January 2003
Blair now at odds with his party on four issues: Iraq, firemen’s strike, House of Lords Reform (he wants wholly appointed), university top-up fees. His backbenchers almost in total revolt. Meet the charming Alan Simpson in the lobby. He says Blair has become a frightening megalomaniac. I wonder if we are heading for a national government with the Labour left in opposition. The trouble is the Tory Party is smaller than the government’s majority.
Michael Spicer
Tuesday, 11 February 2003
Do you know, the House of Commons adjourned tonight at 5:30! So, on the eve of war, Tam Dalyell having been unable yesterday to get an emergency debate on it, the House goes away, and on Thursday, in two days’ time, the House is rising for a week’s holiday. I’m not exaggerating, I think the House of Commons is taking its own life while the balance of its mind is disturbed. It is incredible! But Blair’s popularity has dropped now to the same level as that of Iain Duncan Smith.* Blairites will disappear once they realise Blair can’t win the election for them – we’ll see.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 15 February 2003
R and I go down to Leicester Square at noon, the tube as crowded as the rush hour, then walk up Charing Cross Road to where the anti-war march is streaming across Cambridge Circus. There seems no structure to it, ahead of us some SWP banners but marching, or rather strolling, beside them the Surrey Heath Liberal Democrats. Scattered among the more seasoned marchers are many unlikely figures, two women in front of us in fur hats and bootees looking as if they’re just off to the WI. I’m an unlikely figure too, of course, as the last march I went to was in 1956 and that was an accident: I was standing in Broad Street Oxford watching the Suez demonstration go by when a friend pulled me in.
Today it’s bitterly cold, particularly since the march keeps stopping or is stopped by the police, who seem bored they’ve got so little to do, the mood of the march overwhelmingly friendly and domestic and hardly political at all.
On the TV news the police estimate the numbers at 750,000, the organisers at two million, the true figure presumably somewhere in between.
Alan Bennett
Saturday, 15 March 2003
I got up in the middle of the night to fly to Belgrade for the funeral of Zoran Djindjic.*
After the service we adjourned to one of the ugly rectangular boxes which Tito built to house his government. Over the tray of vodka I got the chance to catch up with old colleagues from my days as Foreign Secretary, many of whom had already read in their national press speculation that I might resign. Joschka Fischer [German Foreign Minister] wanted to know how Britain had got into this cul-de-sac and I found that I could not give him an explanation that satisfied even myself. He underlined the degree of opposition to military action by observing to me that ‘you and I are not pacifists’. Indeed we are not and we worked together closely on behalf of Britain and Germany during the Kosovo campaign, but neither of us can support this one.
Robin Cook
Friday, 28 March 2003
The Americans – or was it us? – have bombed another market in Baghdad, this time killing at least 50 people and maiming hundreds of others. The evening television news is full of weeping, screaming, angry Iraqis. As usual official spokesmen are lying or obfuscating. Cambodia, Iraq (last time round), Kosovo, Afghanistan, it’s always the same. They never own up. I am so glad I voted against this lousy, rotten war.
Chris Mullin
Sunday, 6 April 2003
All of Rupert Murdoch’s 175 papers are in favour of the war, though he always claims that his editors are independent and decide for themselves. I wonder whether the Rupert Murdoch Professorship at Oxford maintains the same fiction.* I know I’m a bore on the subject and thought to be an unworldly fool but so long as it bears his name this grubby appointment is a continuing stain on the reputation of the university that solicited it.
Alan Bennett
Wednesday, 9 April 2003
Rafah, Gaza
Right now I am on duty … my third night at Dr Samir’s …
I have had my head filled with so much propaganda and yet I know that in situations like this half-truths can build on each other exponentially to create a massive wrong conclusion. People believe what they want to …
Things have gone to shit in Palestine, that is for certain. People die all the time and life is cheap, but why? Some is justified, but the line for me is when I see Israeli troops inflict unnecessary pain. Bulldozing houses and injuring children in assassinations provoke a huge, burning anger inside me. But there is always the ‘What if?’ …
When it comes down to it, I have seen no direct actions in major violations of the Geneva convention. Hype can so easily make you lose sight of that fact.
Tom Hurndall†
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former President of France, who is chairing the great forum on the new European Constitution, came to Number 10 today, and the Government is determined not to give us a referendum on it. The Daily Mail wants it, The Times wants it, the Sun wants it, and the Tories want it. Andrew Marr was very candid as he stood outside Number 10 Downing Street. He said the Government don’t want it because they think they’d lose it. But the fundamentally undemocratic nature of Blair is coming out bit by bit.
Tony Benn
Friday, 30 May 2003
Watched the Seven o’clock News, and I must say there were some sensational news stories: 2,400 people have been sacked by a company by text message. The workforce haven’t received their pay and there is no redundancy money.
Then the Chief Executive of HSBC’s subsidiary in America, Household International, was paid £35 million by the directors, and it was upheld by institutional shareholders at the shareholders’ meeting, against the votes of individual shareholders.
Another news item was that a British soldier in Iraq had sent photographs to be developed in a photo shop in Birmingham, and the guy who developed these was so shocked at seeing an Iraqi soldier gagged and bound, and hanging in a net from a hook in a forklift truck, that he reported it to the police.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 4 June 2003
In the corridor behind the Speaker’s chair, I came across Alan Milburn and we had a little sotto voce conversation about the current state of play. He shares my view that the situation is dangerous. ‘Some of our colleagues have decided they want regime change here.’ He thinks Clare [Short] might run as a stalking horse for Gordon. ‘We need to have a grown up conversation with the unions. Tony must tread carefully and not just say, as he has in the past, fuck them.’ He added, ‘We’d be mad to get rid of the most successful prime minister for years.’ He went away saying he was going discreetly to check the party’s standing orders to see how many MPs would be needed to endorse a challenge.
Chris Mullin
Sunday, 6 July 2003
Top of the news this evening is that the new Bishop of Reading, who’s just been appointed suffragan bishop by the Bishop of Oxford, has asked permission to withdraw. He has to ask the Queen’s permission, because she’s already appointed him. The reason is, quite frankly, that the African members of the Lambeth Conference would have withdrawn from the Anglican communion worldwide if a gay bishop had been consecrated. They could quite happily live with war and bloodshed, but not with homosexuality, and it shows how terribly vulnerable the church is, because these African churches have become very evangelical and fundamentalist, and for them, gay relations are just worse than killing people.
Tony Benn
Friday, 18 July 2003
I was lying in bed watching TV when they suddenly flashed up that Dr David Kelly, the Iraq expert, who was exposed last week as the source of Andrew Gilligan’s claim that the Government ‘sexed up’ their Iraq war dossier, had gone missing.
I felt the hairs on my back shooting up. Was he dead? Had he killed himself, or been killed? … I raced into the office. That was about as dramatic as politics could ever get.
At 11 am a body was found. And at 2 pm it was confirmed as Kelly’s. He had almost certainly killed himself …
Blair looked terrible when he disembarked [off a flight from Japan]. He knows how serious this is.
Piers Morgan
The death of Dr David Kelly brought more obloquy down on the Government’s head for its Iraq war policy. Much of the Kelly row centred on two government documents: the first was published in September 2002, the second in February 2003. The second of the two was dubbed the ‘Dodgy Dossier’* because of the amount of plagiarised and unattributed material it contained. The BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan reported on high-level scepticism about this dossier without revealing any of his informants. But eventually Dr David Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and MOD expert on biological warfare, was named as a source. He took his life after intensive media coverage and speculation and a campaign directed at undermining his authority as an expert on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programme.
Friday, 26 September 2003
IDS has apparently called for Blair’s resignation but no mention of this in the press – extraordinary. It really does look as if they want to ignore IDS whatever he does.
Michael Spicer
Tuesday, 7 October 2003
M from Washington called in. He says that contrary to what I was told yesterday at Vauxhall Cross [headquarters of SIS/MI6] many of the Iraqi scientists are talking, they are all singing the same tune and believed to be telling the truth. Namely that Saddam disposed of his remaining chemical and biological weapons after his sons-in-law defected and has had nothing for the last seven years.
Chris Mullin
Friday, 24 October 2003
Got up at six. Concorde’s last day. I’m going off in just over a couple of hours to Heathrow for the last flight.
One took off from New York and one from Edinburgh. We were due to take off at about 2.15.
I was on the very front row of the plane, next to Lord Macfarlane. The air hostesses were very charming, and asked us to sign their programmes. I wandered up and down the plane with my video camera. I asked one of the hostesses to take the camera into the cockpit, which they did. They wouldn’t let me in while we were flying. I got a picture of the controls showing Mach II and Speed 1,350 miles an hour at 50,000 feet and temperature of minus 53 degrees, and all that. We went supersonic very briefly, and then we slowly came in. We landed about two minutes past four back at Heathrow.
Having flown in it 33 years ago, at the very beginning, I felt the pilot, John Cochrane, and I had flown over a longer span than anybody else.
We came in first, and the Concorde from Edinburgh came in second, and the Concorde from New York came in third.
We were unloaded third, and I went into a hospitality tent, and there was Colin Marshall, the Chairman of British Airways, who came up. David Frost was there of course. It was a very moving day, and I made a little comment about the people who’d designed and built it – that’s what I care about. Of course, typical of Britain, the people who really did the work weren’t included … but still, I mustn’t gripe about it, because I did enjoy it very much.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 30 October 2003
Denis Thatcher’s memorial service. Beautiful music in the Guards’ Chapel. Margaret in tears as she walks down the aisle with her grandson. Afterwards at marquee reception in Wellington Barracks. Michael and Sandra Howard move about like the unanointed King and Queen. (He declares later in the afternoon.) David Davis, who has surrendered unconditionally to Howard, looks like a PoW (all the stuffing out of him).*
Michael Spicer
Sunday, 25 January 2004
Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, has said he doubts whether weapons of mass destruction will ever be found, whereas Blair says he’s certain they will be. It did make me wonder whether we could argue that the Prime Minister claims he’s speaking the truth, and searches are being made to find out if there is any truth in the Prime Minister, and so far, no evidence has been found.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 28 January 2004
Daily Mirror
Hutton’s cleared everyone in the Government of doing anything wrong at all and blamed it all on the BBC.* I think it’s a complete stinking whitewash. But Alastair Campbell immediately appeared to address the nation from some fancy Government building and started banging on about being completely exonerated – and effectively calling for BBC bosses, Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies to resign. It was a shocking performance, totally lacking in grace or dignity. Alastair’s conveniently forgotten that if he hadn’t gone to war with the BBC in the first place, then none of this would have happened and David Kelly would almost certainly still be alive. Fact.
I hoped nobody from the BBC would resign, but Davies has quickly fallen on his sword. And Dyke’s rumoured to be ‘considering his position.’ We have done a thunderous attack on Hutton and the Government, and urge the BBC to stand firm. But I fear the worst here.
Piers Morgan
Wednesday, 11 February 2004
The Chinese cockle-pickers who died in Morecambe Bay, in an incoming tide, had apparently paid £20,000 to be smuggled into Britain, and were earning a pound for every thousand cockles they picked. The gang masters got a hundred pounds. One tragic guy had rung all the way home to his wife in China on his mobile phone, stuck in the mud, ‘I think I’m going to die. The water’s up to my neck. There’s nothing I can do about it.’ Oh God, talk about the exploitation of capitalism!
Tony Benn
On the London Underground
I sat down opposite a Bengali Muslim wearing a tunic, hat (i.e. I keep my head covered, I am a holy man) and sporting a trademark mosquestyle beard. Even though I’ve criticised in Parliament the War on Terror becoming a War on Men with Beards, I find that I am now more wary of men with beards. I treat people how I find them but I find that many of the obviously religious men (with beards, hats and tunics) seem to be hostile towards me.
There could be many reasons for this, ranging from the war in Iraq … to my Jewish background, to the fact that I’ve campaigned for gay rights, to mere paranoia on my part. This particular man, in his mid twenties, fixed me with a hard and unyielding glare. Our eyes locked, without warmth or recognition and I immediately went into every Londoner’s standard ‘Do not look or talk to me while I am on the tube,’ mode. He did the same …
The tube arrives at Mile End, and it floats through my mind that I hope the man with the beard doesn’t get off with me.
‘Excuse me?’ He’s looking straight at me.
‘Yes?’ My natural reaction is always to smile. But not to him. I’m waiting to see what he wants.
‘You’ve left your bag,’ he says.
Oona King
Saturday, 20 March 2004
Nicholas Hytner* has shown the script of The History Boys to one of his former teachers at Manchester Grammar School, who says that teaching these days is so circumscribed that many traditional tools of the trade are now impermissible. Sarcasm, for instance, is out, pupils are never touched and there are often viewing panels in the doors.
Alan Bennett
The papers this morning were all about Piers Morgan’s dismissal [from the Daily Mirror]. It is interesting that the four casualties of the war have not been the ministers responsible for the war, but Gavyn Davis (the Chairman of the BBC), Greg Dyke, (Director General of the BBC), Andrew Gilligan, (journalist for the BBC), who was absolutely right, and now Piers Morgan. It may be the media is now frightened about the way the Government treats them. I think it is quite right to be suspicious of the media, but in this particular case the media are right and the Government’s wrong. They say Piers Morgan published hoax pictures, but then, Blair took us to war with false information about weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 13 June 2004
Bethnal Green and Bow
Back in Whitechapel by midday to visit tenants in a block of flats. Terrible antisocial behaviour problems. The usual – heroin and the detritus it leaves behind: foil, plastic bottles, condoms, urine, shit, vandalised property, break-ins, fear. The tenants understandably want me to walk up the stairs to look at the mess. I do, but by now I think my right ovary is about to pop.*
I need to go to hospital. Just as we’re leaving a young woman arrives to tell me about her recent burglary. Then somebody else wants to show me the broken exit-door lock. Finally leave, ring the hospital and they tell me to come in for a scan. I keep saying, ‘I know there’s something wrong.’
Oona King
Monday, 19 July 2004
Meeting with Michael Howard in his room … I say, ‘Parliamentary party restive and anxious. We need to recapture Sun readers of the Thatcher (and Disraeli!) years and from whom [we] were totally disconnected at the by-elections. We must reconnect with the patriotic working class, who have left up their crosses of St George on their semi-detached houses and white vans [after the World Cup]. Policies on immigration, Europe, crime, need to be toughened up.’ As the son of an immigrant, MH is in a good position to do something about this.
Michael Spicer
Wednesday, 8 September 2004
A Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, has put down a motion to impeach Blair over the war. He looked up obsolete parliamentary techniques, and found one that hasn’t been used since Lord Palmerston in 1830, and discovered if you did table a motion for impeachment, it had to be debated. Whether the Tories will vote for it, I don’t know, but they might. Labour MPs dare not, at risk of expulsion … my own advice is not to do it. I think it’s a mistake because, first of all, MPs would be voting for something they had already voted on, the war, so it would be overwhelmingly defeated, and that would allow Blair to say he’s had a vote of confidence.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 28 October 2004
Spending time with George Galloway is like dipping your toe in a bloodbath. He says ‘Oona King’ as many times as possible in the same breath as ‘George Bush’. George Bush and Oona King, Oona King and George Bush. Both of them are at war with Islam. Again and again and again and again.
‘The US and Britain, two of the most powerful countries in the world,’ said George Galloway, ‘with Oona King’s approval have massacred far more civilians than Osama bin Laden killed in New York and Washington on 9 /11 …’
I suppose I should take a leaf out of Galloway’s book and sue him for saying that I ‘approve massacres’. Instead I point out [on a radio station] that he sipped tea with Saddam Hussein, exchanged niceties with a butcher.
Three times in a row Galloway responds ‘You be careful you don’t libel me now.’ He’s great at suing people but he can’t sue me for quoting him. Can he?
Oona King
Had dinner with the Browns and various political chums of theirs including Harriet Harman, Margaret Hodge and Sue Nye.
Gordon is a strange Jekyll and Hyde character. Over dinners like this one, he’s relaxed, chatty, gossipy and extremely charming. Then I watch him on TV and he turns into one of the Thunderbirds, speaking in a relentless high-speed monotone, performing one of the worst stage smirks I’ve ever seen when he thinks he should lighten up a bit and generally coming across as a dour, stiff Scots bloke who looks after our money. Which is a perfect image for Chancellor but hopeless if you want to make the move to Prime Minister.
His ‘people’ are all from the same mould. Ed Balls is quite fun away from a screen and so is Alistair Darling. But put them on Newsnight and it’s like an undertaker’s taken over the airways to announce mass euthanasia programmes for anyone who laughs in public.
Piers Morgan
Saturday, 13 November 2004
Boris Johnson was sacked by Michael Howard tonight* after more stories of his alleged nocturnal activities hit the papers …
The whole Boris the Buffoon act makes me laugh. The guy is incredibly clever and knows exactly what he is doing. Boris worked out long ago that the public are suckers for that dithering, bumbling, upper-class twit stuff, so he gives them exactly what they want, and they lap it up.
Underneath the phoney bluster is a keen political brain calculating a path to power.
Piers Morgan
Thursday, 18 November 2004
I had the great pleasure of seeing the Speaker, Michael Martin, getting up and announcing that the Hunting Bill would be passed by the Parliament Act. I mean, it couldn’t be a more interesting end, and it’s entirely the Prime Minister’s fault. If he’d dealt with it seven years ago, it would all have been over by now, but he left it and left it and left it, and the only time he ever voted was not to ban hunting, but for an amendment that would regulate hunting. So it’s all his fault, and it has enormously angered Labour MPs.
Tony Banks has had a big success.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 1 January 2005
Paris
Last night, New Year’s Eve, Tiberio and I celebrated our thirteenth anniversary. But you can’t celebrate with a global catastrophe unfolding in the background. Tsunami.
The first reports on Boxing Day said that 10,000 people had died. The next day it was 25,000, then 30,000, then 40,000, 100,000 and as of yesterday 150,000. With such a high number it’s almost impossible to register the individual human loss. It was caused by a huge underground earthquake with its epicentre in Indonesia. It was so powerful that it tilted the world on its side, coasts in some areas moved twenty metres in a second and giant waves swept everything before them – humans, hospitals, coastlines, hotels, villages. At least 80,000 Indonesians have been killed. Eighty thousand. Apparently Britain was hit by a tsunami in 5,000 BC. Suddenly Noah’s Ark jumps from myth to reality.
Oona King
Saturday, 15 January 2005
Gerry Doherty, the new left wing General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, came to address the Campaign Group of MPs. I like him so much. He told us: ‘We’re hoping to shift the union to the left, but I have to be pragmatic.’ He said that the railway system is in a state of collapse, no railway building occurs now in Britain, and when you think we built the first railways, and built them all over the world, it is another example of de-industrialisation. He said the public subsidy is an absolute disgrace. I asked whether a European Union Directive made it impossible for us to renationalise the railways. ’Well,’ he said, ‘that may be so, but the French take no notice of it.’
He said that the railway operators own nothing; they just operate. They don’t own the track, they don’t own the stations, they don’t own the rolling stock, they don’t own anything; and what we must do, among other things, he said, is to keep up the campaign for railway nationalisation and restore the building of railway engines and railway rolling stock in Britain. I agree with that – it was wonderful.
Tony Benn
Monday, 24 January 2005
A bad night, pains behind my eyes and at the back of my head. Set out for London stuffed with paracetamol. From the train I rang Sunderland Council’s chief executive, about the plastic bags in the trees; they are all over the city.
At the House I ran into Tam Dalyell who said, ‘Chris, what are we going to do about Iraq?’
‘I think we are stuck. What would you do?’ I replied.
‘Declare victory and end the occupation.’
‘What do you think would happen, if we did?’
‘I think there would then be a period of calm.’ He quoted one of his Iraqi contacts in support of the proposition.
‘How many refugees do you think there would be?’
He cited his Iraqi contact again, ‘No more than a 1,000 of those who have collaborated with occupation.’
A very optimistic scenario but, who knows, it may come to that eventually.
Chris Mullin
Tuesday, 1 February 2005
Tower Hamlets, East London (Bethnal Green and Bow constituency)
Most of the Bengali women I meet today are on very low incomes, living with families of up to twelve people in two or three-bedroom flats with serious damp problems, leading to health problems and family breakdown. I outline what the Government is doing to help the poorest. New money for housing, new money to help parents through the Sure Start programme, a new health centre on the Ocean [housing estate], new money to tackle drug addiction, a new childcare centre, new money for babies, new money for this, new money for that. ‘But what about our heating bills? The Government doesn’t pay for them.’ I had mentioned the extra money given to pensioners this year for their winter fuel payments.
‘No, you’re right, the Government can’t pay for everyone’s heating bills.’ I was starting to get exasperated. We’re under attack from middle England for being too preoccupied with the poorest, and yet when I speak to low income families, they’re just as angry we haven’t given more.
‘We’re trying our best. In Bangladesh the government doesn’t pay for anything. Here we pay for a lot.’
In fact if we were in Bangladesh we might be doing a bit better – the birth rate in Dhaka is lower than in Tower Hamlets!
Oona King
Monday, 21 March 2005
[TV agent] John Webber invited me to a glittering Board of Deputies dinner tonight, one of the biggest nights in the Jewish society calendar. Tony Blair was the guest speaker, so this would be the first time I had been in the same room as him since the book came out.* I arrived early and immediately bumped into Victor Blank [chairman of Trinity Mirror] who was as charming as ever. Admittedly he helped sack me when the heat got too close to his own chair, but I hold no grudge against him.
He introduced me to Gerald Ronson, the business tycoon who has fought his way back from the Guinness Four disgrace. Before I could exchange pleasantries, Ronson started berating me for being too anti-Israeli [when I was editor] on the Mirror. He was all red-faced and spluttering, as if he was my boss bollocking me for stealing paperclips. ‘We always tried to be impartial, Mr Ronson,’ I said firmly but he was having none of it and carried on venting his spleen until I gave up defending myself and walked away.
Piers Morgan
I was going to get on with work, but I watched the Pope’s funeral [Pope John Paul II] on television. Every possible comment that could have been made has been made on the television since he died nearly a week ago, but the funeral did reveal a number of things. First of all, it showed the enormous power of religion in the world. Bush went over, Chirac, Schroeder, representatives from Saudi Arabia, the Russian Orthodox Church – a tremendous gathering of people – Blair of course, Prince Charles, of all people, representing Britain. Mugabe was there; Prince Charles shook hands with Mugabe, possibly by mistake.*
Also, the Pope himself: he was an actor really, a very skilful communicator. His attitude to birth control led to the thousands and thousands, millions perhaps, of people being born with AIDS, who could have been protected if their fathers had used condoms. His attitude to women, outrageous. He’s been given credit for having destroyed Communism, but I think Gorbachev had much more to do with the transformation of the Soviet Union than the Pope.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 9 April 2005
Sunderland
To the Stadium of Light to see Sunderland beaten 2–1 by Reading. If we get back into the Premiership – and it looks as though we might – we will be smashed out of sight.
Charles married Camilla [Parker Bowles] this afternoon. The Queen looked remarkably cheerful as they emerged from St George’s chapel. As one of the commentators remarked, no doubt she was thinking, ‘Thank Gawd, that’s over.’
Chris Mullin
Eve of General Election
This is the strangest Election of my life. It’s like three managing directors competing for the job of running Tesco. I thought it was totally boring and totally unprincipled. But maybe the Liberals will do well, maybe Michael Howard will do better than he thinks … I wouldn’t like tonight to predict anything.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 5 May 2005
General Election day and I spent most of it convincing myself not to vote, in protest at Blair’s Iraq folly. In the end I did cast my name for Labour because of the persuasive ‘Vote Tony, get Gordon’ arguments. The Tories are still all over the place, Charles Kennedy and his Lib Dems just seem a vacuous bunch of mediocre clods and Labour have undeniably done an OK job domestically. Not a great one, just an OK one. It’s just a tragedy that Blair has let himself, and us, be sucked into the horrific position of being America’s poodle.
Piers Morgan
Sunday, 8 May 2005
Speak to Michael Howard on the phone. He will stay until the Party conference.
I tell him his legacy will be to have plugged the leaking Conservative ship (provided a semblance of unity) and to have set it sailing again.
Michael Spicer
Sunday, 29 May 2005
France has rejected the European Union constitution, fifty-five to forty-five percent. It’s really exciting! It’s the first democratic response to the bureaucracy of the new Europe, and the scandal is that the German Parliament didn’t allow the German people to have a referendum, so this is very important. It will put Blair in a difficulty – will there be a referendum here? We don’t know. The Dutch are going to vote on Wednesday,* and then there are the Danes coming along. It brought out so clearly what the whole thing was about – whether you want a capitalist Europe working in a globalised economy on a free-market basis run by bureaucrats, or whether you want a democratic Europe. It’s a very, very big issue with huge implications. I felt so cheerful, I can’t tell you!
Tony Benn
Thursday, 7 July 2005
Olympic euphoria was short-lived. Bombs have gone off all over London, on underground trains at Aldgate, Kings Cross and Edgware Road and on the top deck of a bus at Tavistock Square.
I arrived at Hampstead underground just after nine to find a jampacked train, doors-open, sitting in the station. At this stage there was no inkling of what had happened. Then a London Underground employee in a blue blazer came and announced that the station was being evacuated due to ‘a power surge’. Several people ranted. In particular a well-dressed man who said he was from Greece (as if the Greeks have anything to teach us about the smooth-running of public services) and a red-headed yob who demanded to know how he was going to get to work in Knightsbridge. The Underground man, an Asian, kept his cool admirably.
Outside, still no clue as to what was happening, I walked down the hill and boarded a 24 bus which meandered for about a mile before being turned back at the far end of Camden High Street. Someone said something about a bomb. I got off and started walking. Gradually the traffic dried up. Euston Road was sealed. Police were letting through only ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the direction of King’s Cross. Wailing sirens everywhere. I crossed into Tottenham Court Road. People were clustered round shop windows displaying television sets which were showing scenes of chaos just a few hundred yards away …
By the time I reached the House it was clear that we had a catastrophe on our hands … It was announced that The Man was on his way back from the G8 at Gleneagles to chair COBRA (the cabinet committee in charge of emergencies).
Chris Mullin
Thursday, 21 July 2005
Dramatic day. I was interviewed by Cherie Blair at No 10 on the subject of prime ministers’ wives for a TV film.
At the end, she leaned forward and asked me whether I would like to have been a prime minister’s wife. I burst out laughing. ‘What, Harold for PM!’
The bubble coming out of my head read: ‘My husband would like to indict your husband as a war criminal, so that’s what he would do as prime minister.’
Antonia Pinter
Monday, 10 October 2005
[Then] to Committee Room 14 to hear The Man address the parliamentary party. Better than his conference speech. Brimming with energy and self-confidence; not a note in sight; still less any suggestion that he is contemplating retirement …
Dave Clelland asked why the government was encouraging private medicine: ‘I’m all for choice, but we said we were going to make the NHS so efficient that the private sector will be irrelevant. Now we are encouraging it. Why?’ The Man gave no quarter. ‘It’s the only basis on which we are going to expand.’ He added, ‘We have expanded the public sector by 600,000 people so when I hear some of our trade union colleagues say, “you are destroying the public sector”, I go, “Huh?”’
Chris Mullin
Monday, 7 November 2005
The French riots have now spread all over Europe, and it’s obviously a really serious situation. Modernisation means cutting the welfare state and adopting neo-conservative, liberal economic policies, and that hurts people, and many of them are of course low-paid immigrants. Modernising the poor out of existence just won’t work, and it will be interesting to see whether the Establishment realises it in time and makes concessions or turns to repression.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 30 November 2005
My computer crashed today. It went berserk, the screen said it was in “safe mode” and wouldn’t do anything. I was suicidal – I can’t tell you! I realised that the hard disk contained all my documents going back to 1997; I couldn’t recover anything, couldn’t print anything, couldn’t work on my lecture to the British Library for Monday. It was like a bereavement. I was just desperate. So I rang [my son] Josh. He came over and copied all the things from the hard disk onto floppies so that I would always be able to find them. He also transferred them all on to my laptop so that I can find them there. He installed Word Perfect on my laptop.* Then he changed the setting on my crashed computer so it goes straight to Word Perfect instead of going through Microsoft Word, and it all came right. I mean the guy is an absolute genius. The most precious thing you can do for anybody is to give them your time and your expertise. I was so touched.
Tony Benn
Tuesday, 6 December 2005
Day of the announcement.
David Davis is preparing himself for his concession speech, which he is to make after I have given the results and before David Cameron makes his speech. I hear that he plans to end this with, ‘I now give you the next leader of the Conservative Party.’ I say, ‘That is meant to be my job.’ David Davis insists that he will do it himself and that Cameron wants it. I say, ‘Maybe we should both do it,’ and leave the room. A moment later I come back and say, ‘That’s a bit silly. You can do it.’ Outside I tell Michael Salter (excellent Central Office man who is running the show) what I have decided. He must have told George Osborne, who rushes up to me and says, ‘There has been no agreement about this with David Davis. As returning officer you should introduce DC.’ It is now five minutes before the announcement, scheduled for 3pm. I say, ‘I have no wish to quarrel with David Davis at this moment. I am quite happy to leave the stage after I have given the result.’ George Osborne consults his PR man (Steve Hilton) who agrees that a handshake between DD and DC and a warm departure from DD would be a good thing. We agree the change of plan and move down the back stairs with Michael Howard, David Davis, David Cameron and me for the event which is the biggest show in town …
Michael Spicer
Friday, 20 January 2006
The tabloids are gunning for Ruth Kelly.* ‘150 PAEDOS IN YOUR SCHOOLS,’ rages this morning’s Sun. No wonder we are becoming a nation of paranoids and hypochondriacs.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 25 January 2006
George Galloway won his appeal against the Daily Telegraph.† If they had won, he would have been bankrupted and out of Parliament, so that was really good news. Also, he was booted out of Big Brother,‡ which is probably the best thing that ever happened to him. Everybody’s making fun of him for dressing up as a cat and supping milk from an actress’s hand and looking ridiculous, but when you come to think of it, he hasn’t lied to Parliament, he hasn’t sent soldiers to their death, he hasn’t authorised the rendition of people through British airports to be tortured. So I rang up his office and congratulated them on his victory in the courts.
Tony Benn
Hosted a meeting in an upstairs committee room for a party of Afghan farmers, for whom I helped the Senlis Council obtain visas.* They were hard, lean men whose sunken cheeks and unsmiling eyes reflected harsh lives. They had between eight and eleven children apiece, save for one who had lost all his to war and famine. The purpose of the meeting, a last minute affair, was to tell us what it was like being on the receiving end of the ‘war on drugs’. Everyone in Afghanistan, they said, grew opium. It wasn’t possible to survive without doing so. Two said their crops had been aerially sprayed and that the sprayers made no distinction between wheat, fruit, vegetables and poppies. Result: hunger. One said that children in his village had died after eating poisoned fruit. Someone asked how much of the billions in foreign aid had reached them and their families: a kilo and a half of fertiliser, they said.
Chris Mullin
Thursday, 16 March 2006
The big news is these enormous loans to the Labour Party before the general election that were never declared, not even reported to the Treasurer of the Labour Party Jack Dromey, who is Harriet Harman’s husband. Nobody knows how many there were, who the lenders were, what the money was used for, whether they’ve been repaid, whether there was interest, who paid the interest, and indeed how many of the people who lent the money got honours.
Other news today, the Prince of Wales has won a case against the Daily Mail, who published his diary of his trip to Hong Kong when the handover occurred, saying that the Chinese leaders were like a lot of waxwork models, which wasn’t very tactful.
Tony Benn
I walked over to Number 10 Downing Street for the presentation of a letter to Blair, a covering letter, to 1,800 signatures, from American physicists headed up by five Nobel Laureates, warning of the danger of a nuclear attack on Iran. This was a letter drawing the Prime Minister’s attention to the warning. The organiser of the Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran is Professor Abbas Edalat, who is the founder of the society, of the campaign, who teaches somewhere in London.
General Sir Hugh Beach, who was Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces, a distinguished gentleman, very tall, neatly dressed, with an umbrella, was there. For a retired Army General to come out against an attack on Iran, I thought was interesting.
Anyway we went, a few of us, up to 10 Downing Street; the usual business – we banged on the door, Abbas handed in the letter. He thought we might be invited in, but they don’t do that. Outside, there were a lot of journalists, permanently camped opposite No 10, so Abbas and I went and made a statement.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 25 May 2006
Prison Reform Trust meeting
Everyone in despair at the current feeding frenzy, which is making impossible rational discussion of penal or asylum policy. It’s not helped by John Reid going around saying the Home Office is dysfunctional. Meanwhile the prisons are full to bursting. At the present rate of sentencing it will only be a matter of weeks before a new crisis looms. Later I did an interview with Radio 4 re the asylum frenzy to say that we had all gone barmy.
Chris Mullin
Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Blair’s made a statement that Israel should have another week to finish the bombing of Lebanon and deal with Hezbollah. When you also take on board the fact that in an exchange between Bush and Blair, picked up on a microphone, Blair offered to go to the Middle East before Condoleezza Rice, to do the sort of preliminary work for her, I mean he’s a disaster. We don’t have a foreign policy.
Tony Benn
Thursday, 28 September 2006
Question Time in Manchester. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since they asked me. Jack Straw and I have unfinished business.
I boarded the train to find that Ken Clarke and Baroness Jenny Tonge were sitting with me.
Within fifteen minutes they were both fast asleep. Ken, comfortably portly and glowing with ruddy health, woke as we pulled into Manchester.
We reached the studio and were taken to the makeshift green room where the usual array of alcoholic temptations lay in wait. I resisted. This is not the kind of TV programme you want to try and wing while fuelled with Chablis.
The seating plan sorted … we all had a rather entertaining chat about politics, life and the universe … The subject moved onto the government’s obsession with our diet. ‘It’s bloody nonsense,’ growled Ken, lying back in his chair with his large pot belly proudly on display. ‘When I was young we lived on chips and sweets and it never did us any harm at all. Labour want to stop us smoking, drinking and eating. They are the ultimate nanny state.’
‘Perhaps you should launch the pro-obesity party, Ken,’ I suggested.
‘Not a bad idea,’ he laughed. ‘I just want to spend the rest of my life eating good food, drinking fine wine, smoking great cigars and enjoying myself. What is wrong with that?’
The show’s editor arrived. ‘Ok, we’re ready for you.’
Everyone began clearing throats and straightening ties. The fifth panellist was Lance Price. A former Blair spin doctor.
The show started in a pedestrian fashion, but kicked off when a young woman in the audience launched into an extraordinary attack on most of the panel, branding Straw a ‘total disgrace’.
Finally she targeted me: ‘And as for you Piers Morgan, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself … You are single-handedly responsible for dumbing down this country,’ she shouted, really getting into her stride. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘I think you’re labouring under the misapprehension that I’m still editing the Mirror,’ I said. ‘But unfortunately I was cruelly removed from that job more than two years ago … however if you’d like me to take responsibility for the government then I happily will. I apologise unreservedly for Iraq, Afghanistan …’
The audience roared with laughter. Even the mad woman smiled … This was the chance to finally pin [Straw] to the floor. He was after all Foreign Secretary at the time.
I went toe to toe with him, lambasting him for the biggest cock-up in modern military history, haranguing him for not resigning, scoffing at his pathetic attempts to justify what happened and generally abusing him.
The audience, as always when Iraq comes up, were united in their fury against him too and with Ken Clarke – who’d opposed the war from the start – joining in the fray, it rapidly descended into a gladiatorial bearpit, with Straw as the helpless young slave being torn to pieces in front of the baying crowd.
He began to physically shrink back into his seat, panic in his eyes … he was getting well and truly buried.
Piers Morgan
Sunday, 12 November 2006
Nick Griffin of the BNP has been acquitted of incitement to racial hatred because all he did was attack Muslims. Now it appears that Lord Falconer wants the law changed so that you can’t attack a religion – well, that would be an infringement of free speech.
Tony Benn
Monday, 4 December 2006
The Man announced, to no one’s surprise, that we intend to update Trident, at a cost of between £15 and £20 billion (excluding maintenance). The case for doing so is threadbare (even he admitted it was an ‘on balance’ decision) and has more to do with ‘punching our weight’ than military necessity. Some rumbling at this evening’s meeting of the parliamentary party, but mainly from Usual Suspects. Margaret Beckett, once a CND supporter, went out of her way to say that she had now changed her mind. The government can afford to be relaxed about a rebellion because it knows it has the support of the Tories.
Chris Mullin
There was a wonderful Greenpeace demonstration on a crane right next to the Houses of Parliament. Some activists climbed up it some time last night or early this morning and hung a huge banner which said ‘Tony ♥ WMD.’ I talked to the police, and they said, ‘Well, if we climbed up there, there might have been an accident either to us or to them, so we just left it.’ But with the Trident debate tomorrow, it was very amusing.
Tony Benn
Friday, 11 May 2007
A vast industry has grown up analysing The Man’s place in history.*
What do I think? That at his best he was courageous, far-sighted, brilliant, idealistic, personally attractive, but that his undoubted achievements are eclipsed by one massive folly: that he tied us umbilically to the worst American president of my lifetime with consequences that were not merely disastrous, but catastrophic. The Man was touched by greatness, but ultimately he blew it.
Chris Mullin