WikiPortallus: Tony Benn.html

With his successful campaign to renounce his inherited title, Benn was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. Later, in the second Wilson government (1966-70) he was a notably 'technocratic' Minister of Technology.

In the 1974-76 government of Harold Wilson, he initially served as Secretary of State for Industry before being transferred to Secretary of State for Energy, Benn retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he was the prominent figure on the left of the Labour Party. The term "Bennite" (never used by Benn himself) came to be used in Britain for someone of a radical democratic left-wing position.¹

After John Parker, he is Labour's longest serving member of parliament. He is known as one of the few UK politicians to have become left-wing after holding ministerial office.² He also has become ever more interested in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and ever less in parliamentary activities. He has been a vegetarian since the 1970s.

Early life and family

His mother Margaret Eadie (née Holmes) (1897–1991), was a dedicated theologian, founder President of the Congregational Federation and feminist. She was member of the League of the Church Militant which was the predecessor of the Movement for the Ordination of Women. In 1925 she was rebuked by Randall Thomas Davidson, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women. Margaret Wedgwood Benn was ahead of her time, as it would not occur until more than 60 years later. His mother's theology had a profound influence on Tony, as she taught him to support the prophets and not the kings, as the prophets taught righteousness.³

He was a pupil at Westminster School and studied at New College, Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, during which time he was elected as President of the Oxford Union. In later life Benn attempted to remove public references to his private education from Who's Who; in the 1975 edition his entry stated "Education—still in progress". In the 1976 edition, almost all details of his biography were omitted save for his name, jobs as a Member of Parliament and as a Government minister, and address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back his draft entry with everything else struck through.⁴ In the 1977 edition, Benn's entry disappeared entirely.⁵ In October 1973 he announced on BBC radio that he wished to be known as "Mr Tony Benn". His book Speeches from 1974 is credited to 'Tony Benn', but much of the media persisted with "Anthony Wedgwood Benn" into the late 1980s. He was frequently known to the public as "Wedgwood Benn" or "Wedgy Benn", the latter usually with pejorative connotations.

Benn met US-born Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926) (from Cincinnati, Ohio, daughter of a lawyer) over tea at Worcester College in 1949 and nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home in Holland Park. Tony and Caroline had four children - Stephen, Hilary, Melissa (a journalist) and Joshua, and ten grandchildren. Caroline Benn died of cancer on 22 November 2000 aged 74 after a career as a prominent educationalist.

In July 1943, Benn joined the Royal Air Force.⁶ His father and brother Michael (who was later killed in an accident) were already serving in the RAF in 1943. Whilst holding the rank of pilot officer, Tony Benn served as a pilot in South Africa and Rhodesia.⁷

His children have also been active in politics. His first son Stephen served as an elected member of the Inner London Education Authority from 1986 to 1990. His second son Hilary served as a councillor in London, and stood for Parliament in 1983 and 1987, finally becoming the Labour MP for Leeds Central in 1999. He served as Secretary of State for International Development from 2003, moving to become Environment Secretary in 2007. This makes him the third generation of his family to have sat in the Cabinet of the Government of the United Kingdom, a rare distinction for a modern political family in Britain. In September 2007, shortly before her 18th birthday, Benn's granddaughter Emily, was selected to contest East Worthing and Shoreham in the next general election,⁸ and is the Labour Party's youngest ever selected candidate^{citation needed}.

Member of Parliament

Following his World War II service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, Benn worked briefly as a BBC Radio producer. He was unexpectedly selected to follow Stafford Cripps as Labour candidate for Bristol South East after Cripps stood down for ill-health and won the seat in a by-election on 30 November 1950. Anthony Crosland helped him get the seat as he was the MP for nearby South Gloucestershire at the time. Upon taking the oath on 4 December 1950⁹ Benn became the youngest MP, or "Baby of the House" for one day, being succeeded by Thomas Teevan, who was two years younger but took his oath a day later.¹⁰ He became "Baby" again in 1951 when Teevan was not re-elected. Benn in the 1950s was an MP with middle-of-the-road or soft left views, who refused to become a member of the group around Aneurin Bevan.

Peerage reform

Benn's father had been created Viscount Stansgate in 1942 when Winston Churchill offered to increase the number of Labour Peers; at this time Benn's older brother Michael was intending to enter the priesthood and had no objections to inheriting a peerage. However Michael was later killed in an accident while on active service in the Second World War, and this left Benn as the heir to a peerage. He made several attempts to remove himself from the line of succession but they were all unsuccessful.

In November 1960, Benn's father died and as a result he was prevented from sitting in the House of Commons. Still insisting on his right to abandon his unwelcome peerage, Benn fought to retain his seat in a by-election on 4 May 1961 caused by his succession. Although he was disqualified from taking his seat, the people of Bristol South-East re-elected him. An election court found that the voters were fully aware that Benn was disqualified, and gave the seat to the Conservative runner up in the by-election, Malcolm St Clair, also the son of a peer.¹¹

Outside Parliament Benn continued his campaign, and eventually the Conservative government accepted the need for a change in the law.¹² The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, was given the Royal Assent and became law shortly after 6pm on 31 July 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, at 6.22pm that day. St. Clair had already given an undertaking that he would respect the wishes of the people of Bristol if Benn became eligible to take his seat again, and resigned his seat immediately. Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on 20 August.

In government (1964–1970)

In the 1960s government of Harold Wilson he became Postmaster General; during his time in that position, he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and the creation of the Postal Bus Service. He proposed issuing stamps without the Sovereign's head, but this met with private opposition from the Queen. Instead, the portrait was reduced to a small profile in silhouette, a format that is still often used on stamps today.¹³ He later became Minister of Technology, a post which allowed his enthusiasm for gadgets^{citation needed} to shine through, including responsibility for overseeing the development of Concorde, as well as the formation of International Computers Ltd. (ICL).

In government (1974–1979): the move to the left

In the Labour government of 1974 Benn became Secretary of State for Industry, but in 1975 he was moved to Secretary of State for Energy, following his unsuccessful campaign for a "No" vote in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EEC. By his own admission in his diary (25 October 1977), Benn "loathed" the EEC; he claimed it was "bureaucratic and centralised" and "of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except the UK have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans."¹⁴

Wilson resigned as Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister in 1976. Benn entered the leadership contest and came fourth with 37 votes in the first ballot. Benn then withdrew from the second ballot and supported Michael Foot for the leadership though James Callaghan eventually won. There was then a sterling crisis and Callaghan and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Healey, sought to gain a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Benn circulated amongst Ministers the Cabinet minutes from the 1931 minority Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald which cut unemployment benefits to secure a loan from American bankers and resulted in splitting the Labour Party. Callaghan allowed Benn to put forward his "alternative economic strategy", which consisted of a siege economy. However this plan was rejected by the Cabinet.

By the end of the 1970s Benn had migrated to the left-wing of the Labour Party. Benn attributed this political shift to his experience as a minister in the 1964–1970 Labour government. Benn wrote:

Benn's philosophy became known as "Bennism", which consisted of a form of syndicalism, economic planning, greater democracy in the structures of the Labour Party and observance of Party conference decisions by the Party leadership.¹⁶ Benn was vilified in the press and his enemies implied a Benn-led Labour government would implement a type of East European socialism.¹⁷ Conversely, Benn was overwhelmingly popular with Labour activists. A survey of Labour Conference delegates of 1978 found that by large margins they supported Benn for the leadership and many Bennite policies.¹⁸

He publicly supported Sinn Féin and the unification of Ireland, although he has recently suggested to Sinn Féin leaders that Sinn Féin abandon its long-standing policy of not taking seats at Westminster. Sinn Féin argue that to do so would recognise Britain's claim over Northern Ireland and the Sinn Féin constitution prevents its elected members from taking their seats in any British-created institution.

In opposition

In a keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference of 1980, Benn outlined what he envisaged the next Labour government would do. "Within days" a Labour government would grant powers to nationalise industries, control capital and implement industrial democracy; "within weeks" all powers from Brussels would be returned to Westminster and then they would abolish the House of Lords by the creation of a thousand peers and then by abolishing the peerage. Benn received a tumultuous applause from the audience.

In 1981 he stood for election against the incumbent Denis Healey as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, disregarding the appeal from party leader Michael Foot either to stand for the leadership or to abstain from inflaming the party's divisions. Benn defended his decision with an insistence that it was "not about personalities but about policies." The contest was closely fought and Healey won by a margin of barely 1%. The decision of several moderate left wing MPs, including Neil Kinnock, to abstain from supporting Benn triggered the split of the Campaign Group from the left of the Tribune Group.

After Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982 Benn argued that the dispute should be settled by the United Nations and that the British Government should not send a task force to recapture the islands. The task force was sent and the Falklands was soon back in British control. In a subsequent debate in the Commons, Benn's demand for "a full analysis of the costs in life, equipment and money in this tragic and unnecessary war" was countered by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stating that "he would not enjoy the freedom of speech that he put to such excellent use unless people had been prepared to fight for it."¹⁹

Benn's Bristol South-East constituency was abolished by boundary changes in 1983, and he lost the selection battle to stand in the safe seat of Bristol South to Michael Cocks. Rejecting offers from the new seat of Livingston in Scotland, Benn contested Bristol East, losing to Conservative candidate Jonathan Sayeed. As the darling of Labour activists it was not surprising that he was selected for the first Labour seat to fall vacant, and he was elected as MP for Chesterfield in a by-election the following year after Eric Varley had resigned his seat to head Coalite. On the day of the by-election (1 March 1984) The Sun newspaper ran a hostile feature article "Benn on the Couch" which purported to be the opinions of an American psychiatrist, a clear attempt to influence the voters. In fact, the psychiatrist had been fed The Sun's anonymous version of Benn. In the intervening period, since Benn's defeat in Bristol, another leadership election had taken place in which Neil Kinnock won, and which Benn was not able to contest because he was not an MP.

Benn was a prominent supporter of the UK miners' strike (1984–1985) and his long-standing friend, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill. Some miners though considered Benn's 1977 industry reforms to have led to problems during the strike: firstly, they led to huge wage differences and distrust between miners of different regions; secondly, the controversy over balloting miners for these reforms made it unclear as to whether a ballot was needed for a strike or whether it could be deemed as a "regional matter" in the same way that the 1977 reforms were.

Retirement

In 2001 Benn retired from Parliament, in his words to "spend more time involved in politics", suggesting that for him 'real politics' is about struggle rather than parliamentary procedure. With Edward Heath, Benn was given the privilege of being able to continue using the House of Commons Library and Members' refreshment facilities by the Speaker. He became a leading figure of the British opposition to the War on Iraq, and in February 2003 he travelled to Baghdad to again meet (and interview) Saddam Hussein. The interview was shown on British television. He also spoke out against the Iraq war at the February 2003 protest in London organised by the Stop the War Coalition, attended by over 1 million people. In February 2004 he was elected the first President of the Stop the War Coalition.

He has toured with a one-man stage show, and also appears a few times each year in a two-man show with folk singer Roy Bailey. In 2003 his show with Bailey was voted 'Best Live Act' at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2002 he opened the "Left Field" stage at the Glastonbury Festival. In October 2003 Benn was a guest of British Airways on the last-ever scheduled Concorde flight from New York to London. In June 2005 Benn was a panellist on a special edition of BBC1's Question Time (shown 30 June 2005). The special edition was edited entirely by a school age film crew selected by a BBC competition.

On 21 June 2005 Benn presented a show on democracy as part of the Channel 5 series Big Ideas That Changed The World, he presented a left-wing view²⁰ of democracy as the means to pass power from the "wallet to the ballot". He argued that traditional social democratic values were under threat in an increasingly globalised world in which powerful institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Commission remain unelected and unaccountable to those whose lives they affect daily.

On 27 September 2005 Benn was taken ill at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton and taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital after being treated by paramedics at the Brighton Centre. Benn reportedly fell and struck his head. He was to be kept in hospital for observation but was described as being in a "comfortable condition". He was subsequently fitted with an artificial pacemaker to help regulate his heartbeat. In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted twelfth in the list of "Heroes of our time"²¹.

In September 2006, Benn joined the "Time to Go" Demonstration in Manchester the day before the start of the final Labour Conference with Tony Blair as party leader, with the aim of persuading the Labour Government to withdraw troops from Iraq, to refrain from attacking Iran and to reject replacing the Trident missile and submarines with a new system. He spoke to the demonstrators in the rally afterwards along with other politicians and journalists including George Galloway and members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In 2007, he appeared in an extended segment in the Michael Moore film Sicko giving comments about democracy, social responsibility, and health care.

In October 2007, at the age of 82, Benn announced that he wanted to come out of retirement and return to the House of Commons, having written to the Kensington and Chelsea constituency Labour Party offering himself as a prospective candidate for the seat currently held by the Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind.²⁴²⁵

In September 2008 Benn appeared on the DVD release for the Doctor Who story The War Machines with a vignette discussing the post office tower which was opened by Harold Wilson when he was postmaster general. He became the second Labour politician, after Roy Hattersley to appear in a feature on a Doctor Who DVD.

Also in 2008, Benn appeared on track 12 "Pay Attention to the Human" on Colin MacIntyre's The Water album.

On 26 November 2008, as part of a tour, Benn appeared at Reading Town Hall, to discuss current issues such as the credit crunch, political history, the EU and climate change.

Aphorisms

Diaries and biographies

Tony Benn is a prolific diarist: eight volumes of his diaries have been published (the first six collected as ISBN 0-09-963411-2, the penultimate available as ISBN 0-09-941502-X). Collections of his speeches and writings were published as Arguments for Socialism (1979), Arguments for Democracy (1981), Fighting Back (1988) and (with Andrew Hood) Common Sense (1993), as well as Free Radical: New Century Essays (2004). In August 2003, London DJ Charles Bailey created an album of Benn's speeches (ISBN 1-904734-03-0) set to ambient groove.

He has also made public several episodes of audio diaries he made during his time in Parliament and after retirement. Short series of these have been played periodically on BBC 7 Radio.

A major biography was written by Jad Adams and published by Macmillan in 1992. Tony Benn: A Biography (ISBN 0-333-52558-2) A more recent 'semi-authorised' biography, with a foreword by Benn, was published in 2001: David Powell, Tony Benn: A Political Life, Continuum Books. An autobiography, Dare to be a Daniel: Then and Now (Hutchinson), was published in 2004.

Michael Moore dedicates his book Mike's Election Guide 2008 to Tony Benn with: "For Tony Benn, keep teaching us".

In popular culture

References

^ Socialist Review, February 1997 - Does Labours Left Have an Alternative?
^ Tony Benn, Dare to be A Daniel: Then and Now (Arrow Books, 2006, ISBN 0-09-947153-1), p.166
^ Tony Benn Free Radical, 2003, Continuum, p226.
^ "Mr Benn wipes away his past", The Times Diary, The Times, 18 March 1976.
^ "Not Out", The Times Diary, The Times, 4 April 1977.
^ Tony Benn, The Biography Channel. Retrieved on 2 April 2007.
^ William Wedgwood Benn, Spartacus Educational. Retrieved on 2 April 2007.
^ Benn's granddaughter runs for MP, BBC News, 25 September 2007.
^ Hansard
^ Hansard
^ Re Parliamentary Election for Bristol South East [1964] 2 Q.B. 257, [1961] 3 W.L.R. 577
^ "Disclaiming a peerage", BBC News (London), British Broadcasting Corporation (2005-07-14). Retrieved on 7 June 2008.
^ 80 fascinating facts about the Queen, The Scotsman, 11 April 2006 (the first of the "10 more things you may not know" near the bottom discusses postage stamps)
^ Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (Arrow, 1995), p. 432.
^ Tony Benn, Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963-7, Introduction
^ Dennis Kavanagh, 'Tony Benn: Nuisance or Conscience?', in Kavanagh (ed.), Politics and Personalities (Macmillan, 1990), p. 184.
^ Ibid., p. 178.
^ Paul Whiteley and Ian Gordon, "The Labour Party: Middle Class, Militant and Male", New Statesman, 11 January 1980, pp. 41-42.
^ "HC Stmnt: Falkland Islands, 15 June 1982". Margaret Thatcher Foundation (1982-06-15). Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr Benn
^ Cowley, Jason (22 May 2006). "New Statesman Heroes of our time - the top 50". New Statesman. Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ "The Magnificent Seven political heroes...". BBC (12 December 2006). Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ "Give us EU referendum, says Benn" (24 September 2007).
^ "I want to be an MP again - Benn". BBC News online (2007-10-04). Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ Fred Attewill (2007-10-04). "Benn: I want to return to parliament". The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-10-05.
^ Nick Stadlen QC (7 December 2006). "Brief encounter: Tony Benn". Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ Gary Younge (20 July 2002). "The Stirrer". The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
^ "Learning English - Moving Words - Tony Benn". BBC World Service. Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ Interview in the movie "Sicko"
^ "Wikinews interviews: Tony Benn on U.K. politics". Retrieved on 2007-12-27.

Tony Benn.html

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