HILARY BENN has allowed a little secret out of the bag which reveals his early instincts were a shade closer to his father’s than the “new” Labour strictures have placed on him as a Cabinet minister. Back in the early 1970s, a translation of a Swedish publication called The Little Red Schoolbook was giving Mary Whitehouse and the Establishment palpitations as it circulated through classrooms quicker than a well-thumbed copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The book – it’s name was a take on Mao’s more famous work –- gave all sorts of useful advice on sex, contraception, staging classroom strikes and giving teachers a hard time. But the original wasn’t risqué enough for the British publishers, who recruited a team of writers to sex it up, including the young Benn. In revealing this to BBC Radio 4, he sadly declined to detail his contributions.