Tony Benn

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Tony Benn about to join March 2005 anti-war demo in London

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (born April 3, 1925), known as Tony Benn, formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British politician on the left of the Labour Party. He was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. The term "Bennite", generally understood to mean a radical left-wing position of corporatist but compassionate socialism, was derived from Benn's name.^[1] He is known as one of very few politicians to become more left-wing after having held ministerial office. ^[2]

1 Family background
2 Political career
3 Retirement
4 Aphorisms
5 Diaries and other works
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Family background

His paternal grandfather was Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet and his father was the 1st Viscount Stansgate; whilst the Wedgwood side of his ancestry (through Sir John's wife) connected him to the family of Josiah Wedgwood, their common ancestor being Gilbert Wedgwood (1588-1678) who established the family as Potters in Burslem, Staffordshire. 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.

Tony Benn was taught to believe that the greatest sins in life were to waste time and money. His father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal MP who defected to Labour and was later elevated to the House of Lords with the title of 1st Viscount Stansgate. Both his grandfathers Sir John Williams Benn (who founded the family publishing house) and Daniel Holmes were also Liberal MPs (respectively, for St. George's, Tower Hamlets, Devonport and Glasgow Govan).

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. This would prove that she was ahead of her time, as it would happen over 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.

He was a pupil at Westminster School and studied at New College, Oxford during which time he was elected as President of the Oxford Union. When he was 12 Benn met Lloyd-George.

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 house 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.

His children have also been active in politics and his son Hilary is a Labour MP and the current Secretary of State for International Development. 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.

Tony Benn was a cousin of the late actress, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

[edit] Political career

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 and won the seat in a by-election on on 30 November 1950 after Cripps stood down for ill health. Anthony Crosland helped him get the seat as he was MP for nearby South Gloucestershire at the time and nicknamed Benn "Jimmy" from knowing him at Oxford University. In 1951 Benn became the youngest MP, or "Baby of the House". Benn in the 1950's was an MP with middle-of-the-road or soft left views with regards.

[edit] 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 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 the by-election 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, ironically the son of a peer too.

Outside Parliament Benn continued his campaign, and eventually the Conservative government accepted the need for a change in the law. The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, was given the Royal Assent and became law shortly after 6 p.m. on July 31, 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, at 6.22 p.m. 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 therefore took the Chiltern Hundreds immediately. Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on August 20.

[edit] In government (1964-1970)

Tony Benn appearing on the BBC's Panorama programme to discuss membership of the EEC, 1975

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, the creation of the Postal Bus Service and the introduction of the UK's first commemorative postage stamps to be designed by David Gentleman. 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.^[3] He later became Minister of Technology, a post which allowed his enthusiasm for gadgets to shine through, including responsibility for overseeing the development of Concorde.

Labour lost the 1970 general election to Edward Heath's Conservatives. Heath applied to join the European Economic Community and Benn campaigned for a referendum on Britain's membership. The Shadow Cabinet voted for a referendum on 29 March 1972 and as a result Roy Jenkins resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

[edit] In government (1974-1979): the move to the left

In the Labour government of 1974 he 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 Britain'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 Britain have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans."^[4]

Wilson resigned as Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister in 1976. Benn entered the leadership contest but gained only 37 votes in the first ballot, coming fourth. Benn then withdrew from the second ballot and supported Michael Foot for the leadership but James Callaghan won instead. 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. His experience as a minister in the 1964-1970 Labour government seems to have influenced his political position. Benn wrote, "As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes in minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that Britain is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our politicial system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum."^[5] Benn's philosophy became known as "Bennism", which consisted of a form of syndicalism, (rather similar to that of Noam Chomsky) economic planning, greater democracy in the structures of the Labour Party and observance of Party conference decisions by the Party leadership.^[6]. Benn was vilified in the press and his enemies implied a Benn-led Labour government would implement a type of East European socialism.^[7] 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.^[8]

He publicly supported Sinn Féin and the reunification 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 recognize Britain's claim over Northern Ireland and the Sinn Féin constitution prevents its elected members from taking their seats in any British-created institution.

[edit] 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 emerged victorious 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.

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 fought and was defeated in Bristol East (UK Parliament constituency) by 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 when Eric Varley resigned his seat to head Coalite. In the intervening period, however, another leadership election took place which Neil Kinnock won, and which Benn was not able to contest because he was not an MP.

His support for the 1984-1985 miners' strike in general and NUM leader Arthur Scargill in particular resulted in much hostility from the conservative press. At the same time, some amongst the miners 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.

He stood for election as Party Leader in 1988 and was defeated again. In the first Gulf War he was active in the anti-war movement and visited Baghdad (after Edward Heath) to persuade Saddam Hussein to release the hostages who had been captured. He was also one of the very few MPs to oppose the Kosovo War. In 1991, he proposed the Commonwealth of Britain Bill. It proposed abolishing the British monarchy, with the United Kingdom becoming a "democratic, federal and secular commonwealth", in effect, a republic with a written constitution. It was read in Parliament a number of times until his retirement in 2001, but never achieved a second reading.

[edit] Retirement

In 2001 he retired from Parliament but remains involved in politics. 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. Benn claimed that his retirement allowed him to "devote more time to politics", suggesting that for him 'real politics' is about struggle rather than parliamentary procedure. 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 regularly 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 June 21, 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 view 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 IMF, the World Bank and the European Commission remain unelected and unaccountable to those whose lives they affect daily. On September 27, 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 '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"^[9].

In September 2006, Benn joined the "Time to Go" Demonstration in Manchester the day before the final Labour Conference under Tony Blair started; aiming to persuade the Labour Government to withdraw troops from Iraq, to not attack Iran and to not replace Trident. 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.

[edit] Aphorisms

He is known for saying (in connection with his placing of a plaque in memory of Emily Davison in the House of Commons) "Never ask the authorities for permission - it takes up so much of your time!" ^{[citation needed]}

"It's very interesting to me that some ex-communists in the Labour party have been able to shift from Stalin to Blair and it hasn't been much of a shift...The shift from Stalin to Blair is a minor adjustment." ^[10].

[edit] Diaries and other works

Tony Benn is a prolific diarist: seven volumes of his diaries have been published (the first six collected as ISBN 0-09-963411-2, the latest available as ISBN 0-09-941502-X). He also wrote Arguments for Socialism (1979), Arguments for Democracy (1981) 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 'semi-authorised' biography, with a foreword by Benn, was published in 2001: David Powell, Tony Benn: A Political Life, Continuum Books.^[11] An autobiography, Dare to be a Daniel: Then and Now (Hutchinson), was published in 2004.

[edit] 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
^ 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, 11th January, 1980, pp. 41-42.
^ New Statesman
^ [1]
^ Benn's autobiography

[edit] External links

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