Tony Benn RIP

[Sheilbh]

I accidentally typed Tony Benn RP first, which also works. I've mixed feelings on him but it's still sad he's died:

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn - obituary
A boyish enthusiast recognisable by his pipe, tape recorder and outsized mug of tea, he aroused greater emotions than any contemporary bar Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher


Tony Benn has died aged 88 Photo: Jeff Gilbert
2:42PM GMT 14 Mar 2014Comments263 Comments

Tony Benn who has died aged 88, was Labour's most controversial late 20th-century figure, leading the Leftward drive that arguably marginalised the party for a generation.

A boyish enthusiast recognisable by his pipe, tape recorder and outsized mug of tea, he aroused greater emotions than any contemporary bar Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. Yet he rewrote the Constitution by securing Britain's first referendum and refusing to become the 2nd Viscount Stansgate. Labour's longest-serving MP (almost exactly 50 years), he won 16 of 17 elections fought, served in three Cabinets and saw his son Hilary enter the Cabinet too.

Benn came from Nonconformist Liberal stock. His grandfather, John Williams Benn MP, founded the family publishing house and led the London County Council. His great-uncle, the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered with a chamber pot by his son, who on release from Broadmoor fathered the actress Margaret Rutherford.

His father, William Wedgwood Benn, a distinguished flier in both Wars, served under Ramsay MacDonald and was Attlee's Secretary for Air. "Wedgie", a nickname transferred to his son, was ennobled in 1941. Benn's mother, Margaret, campaigned for Congregationalism outside the United Reformed Church; Benn considered himself a latter-day Puritan.

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was born on April 3 1925, the second son of three. He sat with MacDonald at Trooping the Colour and made his first (non-political) speech aged six at Sir Oswald Mosley's house. From Westminster School he went in 1942 to New College, Oxford, to read PPE, then followed his brother Michael into the RAF; he was training in Rhodesia when Michael's death left him heir to the title. Posted to the Middle East, he transferred to the Fleet Air Arm, but Japan surrendered before he could see action.

The young Benn joined the Labour Party in 1943. As president of the Oxford Union in 1947, he debated in America, and after graduating returned there as a Benn Brothers salesman before joining the BBC World Service as a producer.

In 1949, in Cincinnati, Benn married Caroline de Camp, an Ohio lawyer's daughter; they had met at Oxford, and he proposed only nine days later (on a park bench which he then bought for the garden of their house in Holland Park). Attractive, radical and with a passion for comprehensive education, Caroline Benn became a bête noir for Conservatives who saw her imposing a levelling-down on her adopted country. The Benns' children went to Holland Park comprehensive, whose governors she chaired.



In November 1950 Benn won the Bristol South-East by-election following the death of Sir Stafford Cripps, and was "baby" of the House for the final months of Attlee's government. He helped stage Labour's first television broadcasts, shunned the Bevanite Left (although, like Bevan, he opposed the Suez intervention from the start), and was appointed front-bench RAF spokesman. He became Shadow Transport Minister, won then lost a seat on Labour's national executive and, unimpressed by Hugh Gaitskell's "fight, fight and fight again" speech, reluctantly supported Harold Wilson's leadership challenge.

On November 17 1960 Benn's father died. The Speaker barred the new Lord Stansgate from the Commons, Buckingham Palace would not take back the Stansgate Letters Patent, and Gaitskell was initially unsympathetic. Some Tories saw an opportunity to return Lords Home and Hailsham to the Commons . The Times insisted on calling him Viscount Stansgate, while The Daily Telegraph stuck to "Anthony Wedgwood Benn".

The Committee of Privileges ruled against Benn, and on April 13 1961 he stood at the Bar of the House to hear himself expelled. Backed by a mass petition from Bristol, he fought an electrifying by-election. Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Lambton spoke for him; Sir Winston Churchill gave support. On May 4, Benn defeated the Conservative Malcolm St Clair, himself heir to a title, by 13,044 votes. Again the Speaker barred him, the Electoral Court rejected his arguments and St Clair took the seat in the House.

A Select Committee then recommended allowing hereditary peers to renounce their titles for life. Benn accordingly disclaimed, St Clair sportingly resigned and on August 20 1963 Benn defeated a clutch of independents. Within weeks Harold Macmillan fell ill, and Home and Hailsham charged through the opening to stand for the Commons and seek the Tory succession.


Tony Benn with wife Caroline and children Hilary, Stephen, Melissa and new baby Joshua (REX)

Benn's youth, his television experience, fascination with technology and lack of ideology endeared him to Harold Wilson, and he wrote many of his leader's speeches. Then, in October 1964, Labour regained power with a tiny majority. Benn became Postmaster General, preparing the Post Office for independence, launching the Giro and persuading the Queen to overrule officials who deemed Robert Burns unfit to appear on a stamp.

For 17 uneasy months until Wilson won a handsome victory, Benn managed his public relations. He entered the Cabinet in July 1966 when Frank Cousins resigned as Minister of Technology, and threw himself into reinvigorating British industry; Bernard Levin noted "the enthusiasm ... of a newly-enrolled Boy Scout demonstrating knot-tying to indulgent parents".

Much effort went into salvaging the strife-torn shipbuilding industry and merging Leyland with the blighted British Motor Corporation, this fiasco stemming from talks at Benn's home in 1966. His hi-tech portfolio comprised the RB-211 jet engine, Concorde (a major Bristol employer), a beleaguered computer industry and nuclear projects that were hampered by infighting.

In the 1970 election Benn, no longer Wilson's confidant, played a backroom role, save for a speech equating Powell's attacks on immigration with Hitler's gas chambers; the so-called "Belsen speech" was widely blamed for Labour's defeat. In opposition, he shadowed Edward Heath's government through its refusal to back "lame ducks" and the "U-turn" when it nationalised Rolls-Royce.

Benn now metamorphosed into a Left-wing populist. Previously a pro-marketeer, he advocated a referendum on Europe, upsetting both sides before campaigning for a "No" vote. He now joined the Left in the Commons tea room. The Scottish trade union activist Jimmy Reid observed that Benn had enjoyed "more conversions on the road to Damascus than a Syrian long-distance truck driver"; an exasperated Wilson scorned him for "tomfool issues, barmy ideas, a sort of ageing, perennial youth who immatures with age". But Benn had identified a rising grassroots militancy that would paralyse the party.

As party chairman in 1971-72, Benn declared war on the Establishment. He shortened his name and deleted his public school from Who's Who, contested the deputy leadership; backed a united Ireland; marched with striking miners; and savaged the media for misrepresenting "the workers".

His Leftward lurch inspired Labour's Programme 1973, which offered more nationalisation and a "fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families". That autumn's miners' dispute and subsequent strike precipitated the February 1974 election – and a minority Labour government with Benn as Industry Secretary.

The next 15 months were Benn's most controversial in government. As he strove to "regenerate" British industry, the press ridiculed "Bennery" while industrialists feared expropriation . Shares plunged as, brandishing commitments to a National Enterprise Board (NEB) and planning agreements, Benn lionised shop stewards and backed new workers' co-operatives. Cyril Smith indicted him for doing "more to damage British industry than the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats".



In August 1974 the Cabinet, with Chancellor Denis Healey to the fore, vetoed compulsory planning agreements and unlimited powers for the NEB; Benn acknowledged defeat but targeted aircraft and shipbuilding for nationalisation.

In that October's election, Benn was Labour's Achilles' heel. One tabloid rented a flat opposite his home, another sent 14 reporters to ask if one of his children was in hospital; the Guardian calculated that he had consumed a medically damaging 29,000 gallons of tea. Wilson scrambled to a narrow majority, then threatened to sack Benn for opposing naval exercises with South Africa.

Benn topped the poll for the NEC, as he would for several years, from January 1975 chairing its Home Policy Committee, which became his power base. Then Margaret Thatcher became Tory leader, opening the way for what Benn — who never underestimated her — described as a "real choice".

That March the Cabinet voted 16-7 for staying in Europe on terms renegotiated by Wilson and James Callaghan, although a special party conference demanded withdrawal. Wilson accepted Benn's referendum to avert a split; on June 5 1975 Britain voted 2-1 to stay in, and four days later Wilson moved Benn to Energy. He protested, but the challenge of North Sea oil was too big to refuse. Benn launched the British National Oil Corporation against the oil majors' resistance and involved the miners in policymaking.

After Wilson resigned Benn polled 37 votes for the leadership, but on April 5 1976 Jim Callaghan defeated Michael Foot to move into Downing Street. Benn's relations with Callaghan were based on a desire to coexist punctuated by threats of the sack. The Prime Minister restored him to the Cabinet economic committee during the IMF crisis in the hope of keeping the party in step.

Benn blocked Labour action against the Militant Tendency, telling Callaghan that Trotskyists were "youngsters who can be won over". He dismissed Foot as an "extinct volcano", and after Caroline Benn gave him a copy of the Communist Manifesto, wrote: "Without having read any Communist text, I had come to Marx's view."

Threatened with dismissal for opposing the Lib-Lab Pact, Benn reopened the argument over Europe. Up to mid-1978 he still carried weight in Cabinet; then his affability gave way to a driven stridency. He exasperated Callaghan, who was struggling without a majority, by advocating accountability for the security services; Freedom of Information; the cancellation of Harrier sales to China; the rejection of the European Monetary System; and the abolition of the House of Lords. It was as if he felt that time running out, his impatience heightened by grief after his daughter-in-law, Rosalind, died of cancer, aged only 26.

Callaghan's refusal to call an election in September 1978 angered Benn. Meanwhile, the TUC rebuffed ministers' appeal for a pay norm, triggering the "Winter of Discontent". When tanker drivers went on strike, Benn headed off a State of Emergency, settling at a level that triggered strikes by council, NHS and railway workers.

Then, on March 28 1979, Callaghan's government lost a no-confidence motion by a single vote. Benn put forward one election manifesto and Callaghan another , and when Labour lost, Benn wrote (despite the sight of Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street): "This is probably the beginning of the most creative period of my life."

He returned to the back benches to "democratise" the party by way of an electoral college, reselection of MPs, and NEC control over the manifesto, setting the stage for the most bitter and disastrous passage in Labour's history since 1931. Left-wing activists pushed reselection through Labour's 1979 conference, pillorying its MPs as traitors, and the 1980 conference, at which Benn addressed 17 fringe meetings, backed his calls to quit Europe, abolish the Lords and form an electoral college.

Benn now joined his wife as a nuclear disarmer. Won over by EP Thompson to a nuclear-free zone in Europe, he came out in 1980 against US bases. He got his policy document Peace, Jobs, Freedom through a special party conference; all that was lacking was a leadership that would implement it.

When Callaghan retired, Labour MPs defied the Bennites by electing his successor. Benn reluctantly backed Foot, who in November 1980 defeated Healey. Few envied him: Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers were close to forming the SDP, Benn's supporters were rampant in the constituencies and only deepening recession gave hope of a return to power.
A special conference in January 1981 adopted a college giving the unions half the vote, with MPs and constituencies having 25 per cent each. Benn hailed "a historic day"; he joined the Tribune Group (having once shunned it as too Left-wing), demanded a "loyalty oath" from the social democrats and supplanted Rodgers when he quit the Shadow Cabinet; but Foot denied him a portfolio.



At 3.30am on April 2, Benn challenged Healey for the deputy leadership, and a six-month struggle ensued for the soul of the party. Benn upped the stakes by urging that the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands be invited to the Commons, claiming that Britain's presence in Ulster was a "test-bed" for repression at home; he also rebelled on defence.

In June, Benn was admitted to hospital suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome; but by September 27 , when the college met in Brighton, his supporters scented victory. Healey won the first ballot by 44.54 per cent to Benn's 33.64, with John Silkin third. Then, amid high drama, Healey shaded Benn by 50.46 to 49.54. Nine MPs who backed Healey — more than his majority — then defected. Benn reckoned the outcome "far more successful than I could possibly have dreamed", but the Right began a fightback and he was voted off the Shadow Cabinet. He then forced Foot to back-pedal on supporting the Falklands task force, enabling Mrs Thatcher to take full credit for victory.

At Labour's 1982 conference moderates recaptured the NEC, ousting Benn from his Home Policy chair – after he had pushed through a manifesto branded by Gerald Kaufman "the longest suicide note in history": it advocated withdrawal from Europe, the renunciation of nuclear weapons and more nationalisation. Benn and 35 Tribune MPs formed a rival Campaign Group, and he became its president in 1987.

He now lost his seat after 33 years, as Bristol South-East disappeared in boundary changes. Declining a move to safe Livingston, he lost the Bristol South nomination in 1983 to his old adversary Michael Cocks; he was selected for Bristol East, but was defeated by 1,789 votes.

Benn was out of Parliament at the worst possible time: Labour's rout sparked a will to unite, and he was ineligible for the leadership when Foot retired. But when Eric Varley accepted a peerage, Benn took his seat at Chesterfield and in March 1984 won his fourth by-election by 6,264 votes. During the campaign, Healey remarked: "Healey and Benn are like Torvill and Dean. I can't get the bugger off my back."

Scargill now brought his miners out against pit closures without a ballot, and Benn campaigned fervently for the strikers, marginalising himself further. In 1987 he enjoyed one more parliamentary triumph: persuading backbench Tories their rights were in danger when the Speaker prevented MPs seeing a banned BBC documentary about the secret Zircon military satellite.



Benn challenged Kinnock in 1988, being trounced in the electoral college, and could not stop him from abandoning unilateralism. Neither could he prevent John Smith from securing one member, one vote, or Tony Blair from scrapping Clause Four. In 1993, after 31 years, he was voted off the NEC. Following the Labour landslide of 1997, other Left-wingers made the running at Westminster, and Benn retired at the 2001 election, scorning New Labour by saying he could now concentrate on politics.

Despite being diagnosed with leukaemia in 1990, Benn filled halls on a speaking tour, became a visiting professor at LSE, and met Saddam Hussein, becoming president of the Stop the War Coalition after Saddam's overthrow by US and British forces. At Labour's 2005 conference he collapsed, and had to be fitted with a pacemaker.

Benn wrote a dozen volumes of polemic, notably Arguments for Socialism (1979, with Chris Mullin). But his masterpiece was his Diaries, published from 1987. The entries — dictated nightly over nearly seven decades — lack Crossman's insecurity, and unlike Barbara Castle's were not written for posterity. Their strength lies in their candour; the tone of Days of Hope, covering the war and Benn's arrival in Parliament, contrasts with the strident End of an Era, recounting his bid for power and eclipse, or the tongue-in-cheek Free at Last. The final volume, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine, appeared in 2013. Throughout Benn emerges as an endearing family man, unleashing forces whose impact he ignored on behalf of a working class he came to revere but never understood.

Benn's wife died in 2000, and he is survived by his four children. His eldest son, Stephen Michael Wedgwood Benn, born on August 21 1951, succeeds as the 3rd Viscount Stansgate. A former member of Ilea, Stephen Benn is director of Parliamentary affairs for the Society of Biology; his wife, Nita Clarke, worked for Blair in Downing Street; their son Daniel, born in 1991, becomes heir to the Viscountcy. Tony Benn's second son, Hilary, is Shadow Communities Secretary, his daughter, Melissa, is a radical feminist author, and his youngest son, Joshua, an IT professional.

Tony Benn, born April 3 1925, died March 14 2014

[citizen k]

Interview from 2000:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_tonybenn.html

RIP

[Richard Hakluyt]

Britain was very fortunate that very few of his ideas were ever put into practice.

[OttoVonBismarck]

No, I don't believe any British politician who wasn't PM deserves a memorial thread here.

[OttoVonBismarck]

And FWIW I only knew of this guy at all  because of the fact he gave up his Viscountcy so he could be an MP, was literally the only thing I'd ever heard about him. Anyone who would trade a noble title for a political position is of questionable intellect to my mind.

[Richard Hakluyt]

He was prominent in British politics for over 50 years, though never in the highest offices of state his importance was that he provided an alternative view throughout that period. You need to know about Tony Benn if you are at all interested in British politics...................which you are probably not Otto 

[Beenherebefore]

Old school Labour, but seemed very upright and erudite.

Rest in peace!

[OttoVonBismarck]

Since I just read his wiki page I'm now aware that in retirement he became the President of the "Stop the War Coalition" which if I had a neutral opinion of him before I now have a gravely negative one.

[Viking]

I can't weep for a man who worked as hard and as long as he did to destroy everything I believe is right and true. His only merit was that he wasn't violent, like so many of his fellow travelers.

[OttoVonBismarck]

He was prominent in British politics for over 50 years, though never in the highest offices of state his importance was that he provided an alternative view throughout that period. You need to know about Tony Benn if you are at all interested in British politics...................which you are probably not Otto 

I used to read the Telegraph daily but I've fallen out of interest these days, I was genuinely interested in British politics for a brief bit prior to and leading up to Cameron's election but he hasn't impressed me a whole lot so I've not paid attention in awhile. I also listen to the BBC satellite radio a lot during my hour commute as they've got good news, and they are slightly more British centric than the other news channels but it's the world service so it doesn't delve into British politics a whole lot. I did hear a long piece about the Scottish independence votes where one of the pro-independence Scots droned on about how in his grandparent's generation, the Empire gave Scots a feeling of belonging. In his parent's generation since so many people worked for the nationalized British industries they never would have wanted independence. Then his argument basically was "since we foolishly got rid of the national industries we might as well split off." 

[Neil]

I always figured that he was working for the Russians.  Still, he was around at a very interesting time in British politics, and helped contribute to the Thatcher government.

[Sheilbh]

Britain was very fortunate that very few of his ideas were ever put into practice.

I think that's the best obituary. A lot of the others are very tinted by his latter day phase as avuncular national treasure. That at least makes it clear why his Labour contemporaries normally hated him and how much he contributed to keeping the Tories in power for 18 years.

I can't weep for a man who worked as hard and as long as he did to destroy everything I believe is right and true. His only merit was that he wasn't violent, like so many of his fellow travelers.

What do you mean? If nothing else Benn was a committed democrat. He loathed the Soviet Union and any idea of a non-democratic socialism.

I always figured that he was working for the Russians.  Still, he was around at a very interesting time in British politics, and helped contribute to the Thatcher government.

His diaries are superb too.

[Sheilbh]

Old school Labour, but seemed very upright and erudite.

Rest in peace!

He started as Old Labour (and technocratic, centre-left Old Labour at that) and then became something much worse. I mean he ended up regarding Michael Foot as a sell-out.

But yeah, very upright, a great speaker and a great Parliamentarian (interesting that you could probably say the same for Enoch Powell ).

[Capetan Mihali]

(interesting that you could probably say the same for Enoch Powell ).

From an American perspective, they were both about as British as it gets.  Probably to a fault.  Enthusiastic tinkerer in Benn's case, cerebral over-identifier with the Empire in Powell's.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Old school Labour, but seemed very upright and erudite.

Rest in peace!

He started as Old Labour (and technocratic, centre-left Old Labour at that) and then became something much worse. I mean he ended up regarding Michael Foot as a sell-out.

But yeah, very upright, a great speaker and a great Parliamentarian (interesting that you could probably say the same for Enoch Powell ).

He was an interesting case; a principled man with good intentions and great personal charm....................there is just the problem that we would have had to shoot him if he had ever become PM 

I have a couple of friends like that, luckily they have never been put in charge of anything more important than a programming team so assassination has not become necessary