The Cabinet Office, Tony Benn and the Renegotiation of Britain's Terms of Entry into the European Community, 1974–1975

Abstract

This article demonstrates how the Cabinet Office was able to isolate rogue ministers as a means of reinforcing collective Cabinet responsibility and enforcing the will of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Harold Wilson returned to Number 10 Downing Street in 1974 promising to renegotiate the terms of Britain's entry into the European Community. The renegotiation effort was coordinated by the Cabinet Office's European division, which aligned itself to Wilson's strategy of engineering the renegotiation to ensure Britain would remain a member of the Community. Benn was opposed to Community membership and in his capacity as Secretary of State for Industry sought to use the renegotiation items of regional development and the steel industry to cause its disruption. The Cabinet Office, in close collaboration with Wilson and Foreign Secretary Jim Callaghan, frustrated his attempts by utilising the machinery of government it operated against him to help push their preferred policy through.

Keywords:

• Benn
• Cabinet Office
• Callaghan
• European Community
• Wilson

Notes

Aoife Collins recently received her PhD from University College Dublin with a thesis on the nature of the Cabinet Office and its role in the renegotiation of Britain's terms of entry into the European Community. She has taught British political history and the history of twentieth-century international relations at University College Dublin, and was an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Doctoral Scholar for the duration of her PhD studies.

  [1] Camps, Britain and the European Community. See also Nutting, Europe Will Not Wait; Pinder, Britain and the Common Market.

  [2] Lord, Absent at the Creation, 4; Young, This Blessed Plot, 3.

  [3] Kaiser, Using Europe, 216–7.

  [4] Toomey, Harold Wilson's EEC Application, 33–4; Pickering, Britain's Withdrawal East of Suez, 153–8.

  [5] Toomey, Harold Wilson's EEC Application, 45; Parr, Britain's Policy Towards the EEC, 70, 88–9.

  [6] Tratt, The Macmillan Government and Europe, 191–8.

  [7] Pine, Harold Wilson and Europe, 176; Parr, Britain's Policy Towards the European Community, 8–9.

  [8] Pine, Harold Wilson and Europe, 179.

  [9] Benn, The Benn Diaries, 237.

 [10] Young, ‘Europe’, 141.

 [11] In this way, Benn moved closer to his cabinet colleagues who favoured a ‘little England’ role for Britain expressed through socialist planning and an assumption of British sovereignty. Parr, Britain's Policy Towards the European Community, 90.

 [12] Interview with Sir Michael Palliser, 7 June 2006.

 [13] Benn, The Benn Diaries, 121.

 [14] Benn, The Benn Diaries, 292.

 [15] Benn, Arguments for Democracy, 44.

 [16] Labour Party, ‘Let Us Work Together—Labour's Way Out of the Crisis’, February 1974.

 [17] Hattersley, Fifty Years On, 244.

 [18] The National Archives (hereafter TNA): Public Records Office (hereafter PRO) CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, Regional policy memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 10 May 1974.

 [19] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, ‘The EEC and United Kingdom Industrial Policy’, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 13 May 1974.

 [20] Labour Party, ‘Let Us Work Together—Labour's Way Out of the Crisis’, February 1974.

 [21] Benn, The Benn Diaries, 287.

 [22] Healey, The Time of My Life, 446.

 [23] Davis, Prime Ministers and Whitehall, 37, 160–2.

 [24] Burch and Holliday, The British Cabinet System; Chester, ‘Development of the Cabinet, 1914–1949’, 31–55; Daalder, Cabinet Reform in Britain; Hennessy, Cabinet; James, British Cabinet Government; Jennings, Cabinet Government; Keith, The British Cabinet System; Mackintosh, The British Cabinet.

 [25] Of these, the most significant is Burch and Holliday's The British Cabinet System. See also: Bulmer and Burch, ‘The Europeanisation of British Central Government’; Catterall and Brady, ‘The Development and Role of Cabinet Committees in Britain’; Smith, ‘Prime Minister, Ministers and Civil Servants in the Core Executive’.

 [26] Hennessy, Whitehall, 253.

 [27] Hennessy, The Prime Minister, 364–9.

 [28] Volume one of Roskill's biography of Maurice Hankey gives the most complete account of the Cabinet Secretariat's creation under its first chief. Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, Volume I; see also Naylor, ‘The Establishment of the Cabinet Secretariat’; and Naylor, A Man and an Institution.

 [29] For contrasting assessments, see Jennings, Cabinet Government, 275; Naylor, ‘The Establishment of the Cabinet Secretariat’, 789; Mackintosh, The British Cabinet, 377.

 [30] Hennessy, Whitehall, 388.

 [31] Naylor, ‘The Establishment of the Cabinet Secretariat’, 791.

 [32] For a discussion of agenda setting and nondecision-making, see Ham and Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State, 67–9. See also Clegg and Dunkerley, Organization, Class and Control, 453; Benn, Arguments for Democracy, 53–7.

 [33] Martin and Holliday, The British Cabinet Sytem, 4.

 [34] Jennings, Cabinet Government, 140; Hennessy, Cabinet, 37–45, explains how the enormity of the Attlee government's legislative programme and the consequent proliferation of committees alarmed officials.

 [35] Jennings, Cabinet Government, 142–3.

 [36] Martin and Holliday, The British Cabinet Sytem, 20; Crossman, Inside View, 63–4, 73.

 [37] Bulmer and Burch, ‘The Europeanisation of British Central Government’, 49.

 [38] Pollitt, Manipulating the Machine, 114.

 [39] TNA: PRO CAB 193/49, ‘The Whitehall Machinery for the Co-Ordination of Policy Towards the Community’, enclosed in Hunt to Wilson, 4 March 1974.

 [40] Davis, Prime Ministers and Whitehall, 142–3.

 [41] Lord, Absent at the Creation, 142, 145.

 [42] Bulmer and Burch, ‘The Europeanisation of British Central Government’, 53; Burch and Holliday, The British Cabinet System, 87; Edwards, ‘Central Government’, 84; James, British Cabinet Government, 202.

 [43] Young, This Blessed Plot, 224.

 [44] Bulmer and Burch, ‘The Europeanisation of British Central Government’, 56.

 [45] Davis, Prime Ministers and Whitehall, 159.

 [46] Hennessy, Whitehall, 255, 389.

 [47] Smith, ‘Prime Minister, Ministers and Civil Servants in the Core Executive’, 42.

 [48] TNA: PRO CAB 193/49, ‘The Whitehall Machinery for the Co-Ordination of Policy Towards the Community’, enclosed in Hunt to Wilson, 4 March 1974.

 [49] TNA: PRO CAB 193/49, ‘The Whitehall machinery for the co-ordination of policy towards the Community’, enclosed in Hunt to Wilson, 4 March 1974

 [50] TNA: PRO CAB 193/49, Hunt to Wilson, 4 March 1974.

 [51] Wilson, The Governance of Britain, 95; Final Term, 54.

 [52] TNA: PRO CAB 193/49, Armstrong to Hunt, 5 March 1974.

 [53] James, British Cabinet Government, 68.

 [54] Wilson, Final Term, 54.

 [55] Wakeham, ‘Cabinet Government’, 475.

 [56] Callaghan, Time and Chance, 303.

 [57] Interview with Sir Brian Cubbon, 11 December 2007.

 [58] Interview with Robert O'Neill, 11 December 2007.

 [59] TNA: PRO CAB 193/60, Cubbon to Gilmoure, 12 March 1974.

 [60] TNA: PRO FV 61/36, Dougherty to Steel, 25 April 1974.

 [61] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3760, European Unit, minutes, 21 March 1974.

 [62] Ludlow, Dealing with Britain, 51, 57, 59, 237–8, 240.

 [63] TNA: PRO PREM 16/72, Hunt to Wilson, 25 March 1974; TNA: PRO CAB 130/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 26 March 1974.

 [64] TNA: PRO PREM 16/73, Hunt to Wilson, 24 April 1974.

 [65] Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, 107.

 [66] TNA: PRO CAB 193/61, Nairne to Hunt, 26 April 1974.

 [67] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 25 April 1974.

 [68] TNA: PRO CAB 193/61, Palliser to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 10 May 1974.

 [69] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 10 May 1974.

 [70] TNA: PRO PREM 16/73, Hunt to Wilson, 14 May 1974.

 [71] TNA: PRO CAB 193/61, Nairne to Hunt, 14 May 1974.

 [72] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 15 May 1974.

 [73] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 15 May 1974

 [74] Callaghan, Time and Chance, 306.

 [75] TNA: PRO PREM 16/73, ‘European Community Renegotiation: Position and Prospects’, enclosed in Nairne to Hunt, 19 April 1974.

 [76] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 25 April 1974.

 [77] Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, 106.

 [78] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3753, Official Committee on European Questions, minutes, 4 June 1974.

 [79] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3753, Official Committee on European Questions, minutes, 2 July 1974.

 [80] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3753, Official Committee on European Questions, minutes, 2 July 1974

 [81] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3752, Ministerial Committee on European Questions, minutes, 31 July 1974.

 [82] Benn, Against the Tide, 210.

 [83] TNA: PRO PREM 16/74, Hunt to Wilson, 4 September 1974.

 [84] TNA: PRO PREM 16/75, ‘Working Group on the Coordination of Regional Aid Systems: Note by the United Kingdom’, Department of Industry, September 1974. See also TNA: PRO PREM 16/75, ‘Brief Discussions in the Commission Working Party on the Co-ordination of Regional Aids’, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 17 September 1974.

 [85] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Nairne to Tomkins, 24 December 1974.

 [86] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Draft telegram to UKRep Brussels, enclosed in Callaghan to Benn, 20 January 1975.

 [87] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Butler to Private Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, 10 January 1974.

 [88] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Wright to Wilson, 21 January 1975, margin note in Callaghan to Benn, 20 January 1975.

 [89] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Nairne to Wright, 22 January 1975.

 [90] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3899, Ministerial Committee on European Questions, Regional aids memorandum by the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 24 January 1974.

 [91] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3899, Ministerial Committee on European Questions, minutes, 27 January 1975.

 [92] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, Regional aids memorandum by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, 17 February 1975.

 [93] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, Regional policy memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 17 February 1975.

 [94] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Nairne to Wilson, 18 February 1975.

 [95] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 19 February 1975.

 [96] TNA: PRO CAB 128/56, Conclusions of a meeting of the Cabinet, 27 February 1975.

 [97] TNA: PRO PREM 16/85, Foot, Benn and Shore to Wilson, 27 November 1974.

 [98] TNA: PRO PREM 16/558, Armstrong to Wilson, 29 November 1974.

 [99] TNA: PRO PREM 16/558, Benn to the Constituents of Bristol South East, 29 December 1974.

[100] TNA: PRO PREM 16/558, Wilson to Benn, 6 January 1975.

[101] TNA: PRO PREM 16/73, Hunt to Wilson, 14 May 1974.

[102] TNA: PRO CAB 193/65, Note of meeting held on 25 October 1974, Cabinet Office, 28 October 1974.

[103] TNA: PRO PREM 16/77, Benn to Callaghan, 11 December 1974.

[104] TNA: PRO PREM 16/74, Bridges to Wilson, 12 July 1974.

[105] TNA: PRO PREM 16/74, Nairne to Bridges, 12 July 1974.

[106] TNA: PRO PREM 16/74, Callaghan to Benn, 2 August 1974.

[107] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Hunt to Nairne, 11 February 1975.

[108] TNA: PRO CAB 193/65, Note of a meeting held on 25 October 1974, Cabinet Office, 28 October 1974.

[109] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Nairne to Hunt, 12 February 1975.

[110] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3904, European Unit, minutes, 5 February 1975.

[111] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Margin note by Wilson in Benn to Callaghan, 28 January 1975.

[112] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, O'Neill to Nairne, 4 February 1974.

[113] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Note of meeting held on 12 February 1975, Cabinet Office, 13 February 1975.

[114] TNA: PRO CAB 193/96, Nairne to Hunt, 12 February 1975.

[115] Young, Britain and European Unity, 105.

[116] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3745, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, steel industry memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 11 July 1974. See also, TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, Private Sector of the Steel Industry: Cosmex, memorandum by the Secretary of State for Industry, 17 February 1975.

[117] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, steel industry memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 17 February 1975.

[118] TNA: PRO PREM 16/408, Nairne to Wilson, 18 February 1975.

[119] Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, 314.

[120] TNA: PRO CAB 134/3896, Ministerial Committee on European Community Strategy, minutes, 19 February 1975.

[121] TNA: PRO CAB 128/56, Conclusions of a meeting of the Cabinet, 27 February 1975.

[122] Castle, The Castle Diaries, 333–34.

[123] Castle, The Castle Diaries, 323.

[124] TNA: PRO CAB 193/97, Fretwell to Denman, 10 March 1975.

[125] TNA: PRO PREM 16/410, Nairne to Armstrong, 14 March 1975.

[126] TNA: PRO CAB 128/56, Conclusions of a meeting of the Cabinet, 18 March 1975.

[127] Benn, The Benn Diaries, 313.

[128] Those Cabinet Ministers were Benn, Peter Shore, Michael Foot, Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Energy, Eric Varley, Minister for Planning and Local Government, John Silkin, and Secretary of State for Scotland, William Ross.

[129] TNA: PRO CAB 128/56, Conclusions of a meeting of the Cabinet, 18 March 1975.

[130] TNA: PRO CAB 193/98, Cubbon to Hunt, 7 April 1975.