Tony Benn - 1925 – 2014
July 2018
Tony Benn was a charismatic and principled politician who passionately championed the causes of socialism within the British Labour party. He was a Member of Parliament between 1950 and 2001 and a Cabinet minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s. In the eighties, The Sun asked if his vehement left-wing views - not to mention his "weird" vegetarianism and obsessive tea-drinking - made him "the most dangerous man in Britain". He was chairman of Stop the War coalition and a high-profile critique of the Iraq War.
“Democracy is always a struggle for justice against the powerful.”
Early Life
Tony Benn was born in London, on April 3rd, 1925. His father William Wedgwood Benn was also the first Viscount of Stansgate. His father was initially a Liberal member of Parliament, who later defected to the Labour Party before being elevated to the House of Lords in 1942. Tony Benn learnt some of his politics from his father. However, although William Benn was concerned with equality and compassion, he never accepted socialist ideology with the same enthusiasm as his son later would.
Tony Benn was educated at Westminster School and later New College, Oxford. At Oxford he was elected president of the Oxford Union, a popular venue for future British politicians.
During World War II, Tony Benn joined the air force and served in South Africa and Rhodesia. His father and brother also served in the Armed Forces, his brother was tragically killed. After the war, Benn worked for a short time with the BBC. Six years after the war, in 1951 Benn was elected as an MP for Bristol South East. At the age of only 26, Tony Benn was the youngest member of Parliament.
Renouncing his Peerage
As his father was a Peer, the law at that time stated that anyone who inherited the seat in the House of Lords couldn’t then sit in Parliament. In 1960 William Wedgwood Benn died. As Tony’s older brother, Michael, had been killed as a pilot in the war, this left Tony in the unwelcome position of inheriting a seat in the Lords. Despite knowing about his position in the House of Lords, he stood in the election of 1961 and was re-elected by the voters of Bristol South East. However, the law prevented him from taking the seat and so he began a campaign to change the law. Eventually, he was successful and the law was overturned (The Peerage Act 1963). The very same day, Tony Benn renounced his peerage and soon returned to the Commons after winning a by-election.
In the 1960s, he served under Harold Wilson’s government becoming Postmaster General and Minister of Technology. He oversaw the first commemorative stamps and changed the Queen’s head to just a silhouette.
In the 1970s, Tony Benn’s politics shifted to the left. He attributed this to his time as Secretary of State for Industry. It was his experience that Industry, and later the IMF (who instituted cuts in public spending) held a great and unjustified influence over British politics. Because of this, MPs and even the government had much less power than they imagined. Tony Benn also felt the civil service were very uncooperative in supporting the reforms of the Labour government. He called for greater intervention by the government and also believed workers should be given a greater say in the running of firms. Tony Benn took great support from the early Chartist and socialist movements. He also derived philosophical support from the Bible and the writings of Marx. He once said he felt in Marx the wisdom of an Old Testament prophet.
“what comes out of his writing, is the passionate hostility to the injustice of capitalism. He was a Prophet, and so I put him in that category as an Old Testament Prophet. “
However, as a cabinet minister some of his ideas were rejected and he was unable to get his views accepted.
During the 1980s he stood as one of the great opponents of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party. He was one of the few MPs to oppose the direct military invasion of the Falkland islands, arguing it should have been resolved by the United Nations. He was also a staunch supporter of the NUM and the Miner’s strike of 1984-85.
The Anti-War Movement
Tony Benn was at the forefront of many anti-war movements. He opposed both Gulf wars and the Kosovo war. He was elected the first president of the Anti-War Coalition – the leading anti-war movement in Britain later named Stop the War. He spoke passionately against both militarism and war. In particular he criticised the perceived imperialism of US foreign policy and Britain’s subservience to it.
“if we are serious about wanting peace we have got to eliminate the causes of war, and to do that we shall have to study our history a bit more carefully”
“Britain is now in effect, an American colony, seen in Washington as an unsinkable aircraft carrier…”
Tony Benn retired from Westminster as an MP in 2001. He famously quipped “he wanted to retire from parliament to spend more time in politics” In his retirement he has continued to be active in political campaigning. He released more volumes of his Diaries. He also successfully started a one man show, a combination of humour and political thought.
Tony passed away on 14 March 2014.
Quotes and sayings by Tony Benn
“Well I came across Marx rather late in life actually, and when I read him, two things: first of all I realized that he’d come to the conclusion about capitalism which I’d come to much later, and I was a bit angry he’d thought of it first; and secondly, I see Marx who was an old Jew, as the last of the Old Testament Prophets, this old bearded man working in the British Library, studying capitalism, that’s what ‘Das Kapital’ was about, it was an explanation of British capitalism. And I thought to myself, ‘Well anyone could write a book like that, but what infuses, what comes out of his writing, is the passionate hostility to the injustice of capitalism. He was a Prophet, and so I put him in that category as an Old Testament Prophet.”
“My Great-grandfather was a Congregational Minister and my Mother was a Bible scholar, and I was brought up on the Bible, that the story of the Bible was conflict between the kings who had power, and the prophets who preached righteousness. And I was taught to believe in the prophets, got me into a lot of trouble. And my Dad said to me when I was young, ‘Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to let it (be) known.’”
"The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain."
“[The Labour Party]‘s never been a socialist party, but it’s always had socialists in it, just as there are some Christians in the Church, it’s an exact parallel.”
Quotes on War and Peace
“it would be a total corruption of the whole meaning and spirit of the UN Charter, which was carefully written to make it possible the peaceful settlement of international disputes, to try to present it as offering a blank cheque for war whenever the United States wants one”
“Simply having nuclear weapons destroys democracy. When a country has them, ministers – of all parties – lie. No minister has ever told the truth about any central question of nuclear policy”
“The word terrorist is a term of abuse used to describe those with whom you disagree. According to Mrs. Thatcher the ANC are terrorists”
“I never had any sympathy with the Soviet system and its lack of democracy, but I never believed the Russians were threatening to invade Western Europe.”
“In 1993 I spoke in Hyde park to a couple of million people…afterwards someone from the BBC said ‘you’re a voice in the wilderness’ and I said ‘well there are two million people in my wilderness, how many are there in yours?’
“It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his.”
Quotes on Socialism and Democracy
“Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community”
“When the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.”
“A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.”
“It's the same each time with progress. First, they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then they say you’re dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.”
Questions to put to powerful people
1) What power do you have?
2) Where did you get it from?
3) In whose interest do you exercise it?
4) To who, are you accountable?
5) How can we get rid of you?
And finally, not a quote from Tony, but one of his favourite poems is below.
YOU & I - To my `Fundamentalist’ Friends
You want to speak of War, I want to speak of Peace.
You say Punish, I say Forgive
You speak of God’s Wrath, I speak of His Mercy
Your Quran is a Weapon, My Quran is a Gift
You speak of the Muslim brotherhood, I speak of the brotherhood of Man
You like to Warn others, I like to Welcome them
You like to speak of Hell, I like to speak of Heaven.
You talk of Lamentation, I talk of Celebration.
You worship the Law, I worship the Divine.
You want Silence, I want Music
You want Death, I want Life
You speak of Power, I speak of Love.
You search out Evil, I warm to the Good
You dream of the Sword, I sing of the Rose petal
You say the world is a Desert, I say the world is a Garden
You prefer the Plain, I prefer the Adorned
You want to Destroy, I want to Build
You want to go Back, I want to move Forward
You are busy Denying, I am busy Affirming
Yet there might be one thing on which we see eye to eye
You want Justice, so do I.
Mahmood Jamal