The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 by Tony Benn

tragic, heartbreaking day with news flashes every moment that brought us all near to weeping. The last day of freedom in Budapest and the agonising goodbye to Mr Nagy in his dramatic appeal to the world. Then the Hungarian national anthem and total, total silence.
    To Gaitskell’s house at eleven where he was sitting at his desk beginning to think of his broadcast. Woodrow Wyatt joins us. For an hour we talk to straighten our ideas and work out a plan for the speech. The news is coming in so fast that it is necessary to have someone watching it for us. At my suggestion Gaitskell agrees gratefully that my brother Dave should be askedto go to the
Daily Herald
office and sit by the tape machine. This he does, phoning with news whenever it comes in. A wonderful service and greatly helpful.
    By 12 we had sorted out the order for the broadcast. While we made arrangements to get a secretary to him, Gaitskell began dictating on to his tape machine. Woodrow and I talked and read the papers and I answered the phone calls that were flooding in. I really felt that at that house at that moment one was in the centre of the world. By 2.30 Gaitskell had completed his dictation and Woodrow and I lunched with him in the kitchen. Mrs Gaitskell cooked and fed us and washed up. It was a friendly and amusing meal: for 15 minutes we could forget the job.
    After lunch we altered the script and recast it until there was a veritable pile of flimsy carbons with unrecognisable scribblings and scratchings upon them. At six we had finished. Woodrow went off and while Gaitskell changed I went on ahead by car to the studio.
    Gaitskell arrived at 6.30 and we went straight on to the set. Gaitskell said a word to the assembled engineers, thanking them and apologising for their long frustrating stand-by.
    We began together re-dictating the whole script with two secretaries and two reporters from the
Daily Herald
to take it down. Finally, at 8.27 we had a script and were ready to go to the studio for a run-through.
    It was a most impressive rehearsal. Absolutely solemn and obviously moved, Hugh went through the whole thing. What he had to say was so compelling that all the technicians stood completely silently and listened to every word. What a contrast to their usual lolling and whispering and hurried glances at the sports news from the evening paper.
    At 9 o’clock that was over and we had to cut five minutes from the broadcast. This was done by striking out a single passage completely and it was most certainly the right thing to have done. At 9.501 took the completed script and sat beside Hugh while he was powdered and brushed, in the long chair. The whole thing had an eerie unreality about it. At 9.55 he began reading it through to check for mistakes. At two minutes to 10 he sat down at the desk in the studio before the camera with the pages in front of him and just time to draw a breath before the red light flashed on.
    I watched from downstairs in any easy chair. It was a very good broadcast, I thought, though I knew that I was far too involved in it by then to be able to judge. Certainly it set a precedent in every sort of way. It was the first ministerial broadcast which ever had a reply. It was the first time the Leader of the Opposition had demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister on the air and it was the first time that we had been able to test our capacity to put out a message to the nation with about 11 hours’ notice. Afterwards we sat and talked for a little while and then dispersed. Hugh autographed his script for me inscribing it, ‘A thousand thanks’.
    Monday 5 November
    This evening I did three meetings in Gravesend. They were not very big and rather confirmed what I had suspected: that ordinary people are not yet moved on this issue. Part of the explanation too may lie in the fact that every British soldier who has ever served in Egypt hates the Egyptian people.
    Tuesday 6 November
    A really useful day – made possible by the