Tony Benn (1925-2014)

[amateur51]

I found him to be a compelling speaker the like of whom I think no longer exists in the Age of SoundBites and tweets.

I think he was sincere in his desire to improve the lot of ordinary working people and to make democracy better than most thought it could be.

Fortunately he has left a huge recorded and written legacy.

It's been a bad week, with Bob Crow's death earlier.

Many thanks Mr Benn!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

I found him to be a compelling speaker the like of whom I think no longer exists in the Age of SoundBites and tweets.

I think he was sincere in his desire to improve the lot of ordinary working people and to make democracy better than most thought it could be.

Fortunately he has left a huge recorded and written legacy.

It's been a bad week, with Bob Crow's death earlier.

Many thanks Mr Benn!

hear hear

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't know where you live, Bryn, but the interesting word there is effectively.

Where I live, the Militants handed Kinnock an excuse to expel them from the party, having already previously ousted the traditional socialists (whoever they were) from the local party.

It gave Kinnock an excuse nationwide politically and organisationally to eviscerate the entire left from the LP, jean. Around the time I quit for, literally, family reasons (1983/4), the leadership removed what gains in democratic accountability we had achieved in what had previously been a heavily MPs plus union bureaucracies-weighted NEC, replacing, amid much media cheered on rhetorical bluster, an albeit imperfect resolutions-based democracy with vague initiative outlines for focus groups to chew over in hope of their "input" being taken into account by the leadership. With a majority of those remaining inside under the sway of a force majeure coalition of reformist illusions, media indoctrination and leadership betrayal all the way back to Wilson, there remained little point of what remained of the left staying put, thus depriving the party of some of its most imaginative thinking in terms of policy alternatives, leaving us all with the yes-men and yes-women filled organisation apparent to all to this day. Annual Conference gave the leadership carte blanche to become the unchallenged media circus that has been in situ ever since.

[kernelbogey]

I had the privilege of meeting him one-to-one a few years ago at a rather thinly-attended anti war event in London. He had a packet of sandwiches with him, and sat on the grass chatting with me. He was a courteous conversationalist, not at all arrogant, and professed himself interested by a (non-political) observation that I shared with him, which I found rather flattering. It was a time when it was fashionable amongst some anti-war protestors to hold placards demonising 'Bliar'. He repeated to me his mantra that politics was about convincing others of your view, not vilifying personalities.

I came away from my encounter rather ashamed of having swallowed the 'loony left' propaganda directed at him by the popular press in the '70s and '80s.

[french frank]

I have moved jean's request for a new thread to the Politics and Current Affairs board, for those interested in discussing the more general topic.

[Andrew353w]

I must admit that I disagreed with almost all of his ideals and policies. That said, he was the politician who set up and promoted the National Giro, which later became National Girobank, with whom I banked for many years. Giro was seen by many as "Benn's Bank", but it was a bank that never manipulated interest rates or lent money to bankrupt despotic regimes. Had we kept it I'd still be banking with them! For that reason alone I admire him!

RIP Tony Benn!

[John Wright]

Just read on another thread about how romantic Tony Benn was, well an instance of romantic, presumably described in his autobiography. The message said:

Tony Benn proposed to his wife on a park bench, just nine days after meeting her....nothing unusually romantic in that perhaps but later he bought the bench from Oxford Council and installed it in the garden of their house....now that is romantic....

[Honoured Guest]

Privatisation

[Serial_Apologist]

Just read on another thread about how romantic Tony Benn was, well an instance of romantic, presumably described in his autobiography. The message said:

Tony Benn proposed to his wife on a park bench, just nine days after meeting her....nothing unusually romantic in that perhaps but later he bought the bench from Oxford Council and installed it in the garden of their house....now that is romantic....

He didn't believe in privatisation when I met him!!!

[Boilk]

...he was the politician who set up and promoted the National Giro, which later became National Girobank, with whom I banked for many years. Giro was seen by many as "Benn's Bank", but it was a bank that never manipulated interest rates or lent money to bankrupt despotic regimes. Had we kept it I'd still be banking with them! For that reason alone I admire him!

Didn't he advocate nationalising ALL the major banks in the 1970s? With hindsight, might have been a good idea

[Boilk]

Tonight on BBC2 at 11.10pm
Labour's Lost Leader

[Stillhomewardbound]

One of the things that p***ed me off good and proper was the Fleet Street characterisation of Benn as an aristocratic toff 'wot 'ad gone orf', it might be said.

This was something that persisted through much of his parliamentary career and the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph were shameless in continuing to refer to him as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the inference always being that he was a leopard clad champagne socialist attempting to change his spots.

He was already an elected member of parliament when his father, a government appointed first-generation, hereditary viscount passed over, Benn then succeeding to a title that he had not earned, desired or required in his life.

Truth be spoken, he was not a son of the soil and, as a public school boy and Oxbridge graduate, it could be said that the brand of socialism he advocated was born out of pamphlets and political philosophy more say than the school of hard knocks and real life. Whatever, there was never any doubt of the conviction with which he spoke when pressing the case of the oppressed.

That the media found it so easy to demonise Benn as a poster boy for the Loony Left points only to the pitifully meagre contribution that the Fourth Estate has made to political debate in this country. His was a voice that deserved to be heard, and heard often, for the manner in which he managed to inform the greater level of debate.

I would have to say though that there genuinely was a recklessness about the man. While I agreed greatly with so much of what he advocated there was an other-worldliness about the man. Put plainly, there was more than a bit of Fred Kite about Tony Benn ('Ahhh, Russia. All them corn fields and ballet in the evening.') and I feel it is only right that that is acknowledged.

I will say this though. His passing is an all too sad reminder of how little anyone speaks to points of principle anymore and how pithy was his [I]bon mot[I] that he was quitting Parliament to devote more time to politics.

[Serial_Apologist]

One of the things that p***ed me off good and proper was the Fleet Street characterisation of Benn as an aristocratic toff 'wot 'ad gone orf', it might be said.

This was something that persisted through much of his parliamentary career and the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph were shameless in continuing to refer to him as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the inference always being that he was a leopard clad champagne socialist attempting to change his spots.

He was already an elected member of parliament when his father, a government appointed first-generation, hereditary viscount passed over, Benn then succeeding to a title that he had not earned, desired or required in his life.

Truth be spoken, he was not a son of the soil and, as a public school boy and Oxbridge graduate, it could be said that the brand of socialism he advocated was born out of pamphlets and political philosophy more say than the school of hard knocks and real life. Whatever, there was never any doubt of the conviction with which he spoke when pressing the case of the oppressed.

That the media found it so easy to demonise Benn as a poster boy for the Loony Left points only to the pitifully meagre contribution that the Fourth Estate has made to political debate in this country. His was a voice that deserved to be heard, and heard often, for the manner in which he managed to inform the greater level of debate.

I would have to say though that there genuinely was a recklessness about the man. While I agreed greatly with so much of what he advocated there was an other-worldliness about the man. Put plainly, there was more than a bit of Fred Kite about Tony Benn ('Ahhh, Russia. All them corn fields and ballet in the evening.') and I feel it is only right that that is acknowledged.

I will say this though. His passing is an all too sad reminder of how little anyone speaks to points of principle anymore and how pithy was his [I]bon mot[I] that he was quitting Parliament to devote more time to politics.

That is well said, in the main, though I'd have to take issue with the view of Ben as pro the Soviet Union, whose political regime he often spoke out against for its lack of democracy as being incompatible with socialism. At least the 96-year old Dennis Healey, belying that oft-spoken adage that wisdom comes with age, Freudulently and unashamedly projected his own upper-bourgeois pretentions onto TB by accusing him of always wanting to be from the working class. At least this was a sort of unconscious admission of the errors of Healey's own ways, remembering as we do his membership of the Communist Party at its most Stalinist. But the one thing that p****d me off the most last night, listening to all the "tributes", were the people extolling the sharpness of intellect, his integrity and above all his prescience, who at the same time said they didn't believe in any of his views!

My own tribute has been to listen again to his Desert Island Discs, conducted by Sue Lawley when he was 63, which would have been in 1988, and which I have on cassette. His choice of recordings was as follows:

1) The hymn, "He Who Would Valiant Be" - set by Vaughan Williams if I'm not mistaken?
2) J.S. Bach "Sheep May Safely Graze"
3) Flanders & Swann "Slow Train"
4) Paul Robeson "Lord God of the Valley" from the film "Proud Valley"
5) Joan Baez "Joe Hill"
6) Mahalia Jackson "We Shall Overcome"
7) Roy Bailey "The World Turned Upside Down" - a folk song tribute to The Diggers
8) Stephen Benn - "Madrigal" - composed by his son after the manner of Dowland

And the two books chosen: the Bible, and Das Kapital - neither of which Tony had read from cover to cover.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Like so many obituaries, we sometimes don't see the wood for the trees. People briefly become saints, though this withers after a short time has lapsed. I had great respect for many of Mr Benn's views, but he was as capable as the next man of reinventing history to bolster his views. One Norringtonesque hypothesis was his claim that had the Falklands war not gone Britain's way, we would have attacked Argentina with nuclear weapons. For all her many faults, Mrs Thatcher wasn't that stupid.

[Bryn]

Like so many obituaries, we sometimes don't see the wood for the trees. People briefly become saints, though this withers after a short time has lapsed. I had great respect for many of Mr Benn's views, but he was as capable as the next man of reinventing history to bolster his views. One Norringtonesque hypothesis was his claim that had the Falklands war not gone Britain's way, we would have attacked Argentina with nuclear weapons. For all her many faults, Mrs Thatcher wasn't that stupid.

Surely Benn was throwing a wobbly there. Hardly "Norringtonesque". Benn was rather more Norringtonesque when in his standard mode, playing a straight bat.