TROTSKY AND GYNAECOLOGY

When I left parliament in 2001 I said – at the suggestion of my late wife Caroline – that I wanted to devote more time to politics. I've never been busier.

This month I’ve spoken at 22 meetings alone. I’ve just published my diaries in a new paperback. I have no secretary and struggle with my e-mails and letters – it’s all very tiring. I’m 83 and would be happy sometimes to have 24 hours in bed.

On Tuesday and Wednesday evening I was in Edmonton, north London, and in Newbury, Berkshire, for An Evening with Tony Benn. This isn’t like one of the fancy events that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton do. I always begin by saying: “I don’t want anything. You can relax – I’m not asking you to vote for me.” There is usually a great sigh of relief.

There were about 350 people at the Newbury Corn Exchange. I spoke for 20 minutes about the economic crisis, which is really serious, and then about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After that we had half an hour of discussion.

Newbury is a Conservative area but there were no critical questions. It is strange, but for the first time in my life I think the public are to the left of a Labour government. They don’t want war, they don’t want things privatised, they don’t want students saddled with debt, they don’t want pensioners on a means test and they’re worried about civil liberties.

The meetings are enormously enjoyable and the audience is always so interesting. I was in east London recently, where a rather scruffy woman was selling a Trotskyite magazine. We were a bit early so I asked: “What do you do when you’re not doing this?” She was a gynaecological surgeon at a London hospital.

CONFERENCE REFUSNIK

The Labour party conference opened yesterday in Manchester, where there is bound to be frenzied debate about the leadership. I’ll watch Gordon Brown’s speech on Tuesday, but I find the speculation about a change of leader very boring. It’s as if politics is all about who is going to win an Oscar.

It’s Labour’s policies that the voters don’t like. They don’t want our troops dying in Afghanistan or millions of pounds spent on nuclear weapons. Unemployment is rising sharply and I think the idea that you can leave everything to the market, which has been the conventional thinking of the past 20-30 years, is now being questioned. Not that any of this will be debated on the floor of the conference.

I’ve attended every Labour conference since the early 1950s. In the old days there was debate and votes and policy was made. I remember Hugh Gaitskill speaking passionately against the Suez war when he was leader of the party.

What we get now is a series of ministerial press conferences and a huge trade fair. So I will be attending a parallel conference – the Convention of the Left at the Friends Meeting House. It’s the first time this has ever happened and it is an attempt to reintroduce political discussion.

By the way, I’m not the only person who thinks it’s boring just to discuss personalities. People tell me they might lose their jobs or they’re worried about repossession. Nobody tells me they want a new leader. That’s the prerogative of the political correspondents – and some MPs.

MY LIFE, YAWNS AND ALL

All the events of the week have been entered into my audio diary, which I’ve dictated every day since 1966. If there was a particularly interesting cabinet meeting, I would miss lunch and get out my tape recorder. I still use the same one – it’s obsolete but I’m used to it. A tape diary has so much more vitality than a written diary.

You can hear the yawns and the coughs and the sneezes. On one occasion, when I was a minister, I flew into Tokyo at about 5am but was determined to record my diary. I still have that tape and can pinpoint where I started talking nonsense and fell into unconsciousness.

NATIONAL TREASURE? NO THANKS

I got a death threat the other day. I was very chuffed as I’ve not had one for years. Once I was called the most dangerous man in Britain; now I’m told I’m a national treasure. That’s the final corruption in life: you become a kindly, harmless old gentleman. I am kindly, I am old and I can be a gentleman, but I’m not harmless.

When I was a minister, a man wrote to say he was going to kill me. Fortunately, he put his name and address on the letter so my officials sent the police round. The man then sent a second letter. “Dear Mr Benn,” it said. “I recognise that my last letter to you was in rather bad taste. Will you please ask the police to go away?”