Tony Benn, the facts

Tony Benn - the facts, 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 someone of a radical but democratic left-wing position, was derived from Benn's name. He is known as one of the few politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office. He has been a vegetarian since the 1970s.
Benn's paternal grandfather was Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet & 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. His father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) who defected to Labour & 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) & Daniel Holmes were also Liberal MPs (respectively, for St. George's, Tower Hamlets, Devonport & Glasgow Govan). Benn's contact with leading people of the day thus goes back to his earliest years as a result of his family's profile; he met David Lloyd George when he was twelve & Gandhi in 1931 while his father was Secretary of State for India.
His mother Margaret Eadie (née Holmes) (1897-1991), was a dedicated theologian, founder President of the Congregational Federation & 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 & not the Kings, as the prophets taught righteousness. He was a pupil at Westminster School & studied at New College, Oxford 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 & as a Government minister, & address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back his draft entry with everything else struck through. In the 1977 edition, Benn's entry disappeared entirely.
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 & nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council & installed it in the garden of their house in Holland Park. Tony & Caroline had four children - Stephen, Hilary, Melissa (a journalist) & Joshua, & 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. His father & brother Michael (who was later killed in action) were already serving in the RAF in 1943. Whilst holding the rank of pilot officer, Tony Benn served as a pilot in South Africa & Rhodesia.
His children have also been active in politics & his son Hilary is a Labour MP & 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.
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 & won the seat in a by-election 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 & 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.
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 & had no objections to inheriting a peerage. However Michael was later killed on active service in the Second World War, & 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 & 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 on 4th 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, & 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, & 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 & 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, & therefore took the Chiltern Hundreds immediately. Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on August 20. This act also helped Douglas Home, to bexcome Tory leader, he then lost the next election to Harold Wilson.

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 & 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. 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 & Benn campaigned for a referendum on Britain's membership. The Shadow Cabinet voted for a referendum on 29 March 1972 & as a result Roy Jenkins resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

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 & centralised" & "of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except Britain have been occupied by Germany, & they have this mixed feeling of hatred & subservience towards the Germans." Wilson resigned as Leader of the Labour Party & 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 & supported Michael Foot for the leadership but James Callaghan won instead. There was then a sterling crisis & Callaghan & 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 & 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 & 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 is 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 & 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 political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, & some new Chartist agitation might be born & might quickly gather momentum." 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 & observance of Party conference decisions by the Party leadership. Benn was vilified in the press & his enemies implied a Benn-led Labour government would implement a type of East European socialism. 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 & many Bennite policies. He publicly supported Sinn Féin & 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 & 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 & implement industrial democracy; "within weeks" all powers from Brussels would be returned to Westminster & then they would abolish the House of Lords by the creation of a thousand peers & 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 & 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 & that the British Government should not send a task force to recapture the islands. The task force was sent & the Falklands was soon back in British hands. In a subsequent debate in the Commons, Benn's demand for "a full analysis of the costs in life, equipment & money in this tragic & 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".
Benn's Bristol South-East constituency was abolished by boundary changes in 1983, & 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 & was defeated in Bristol East 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, & he was elected as MP for Chesterfield in a by-election the following year when Eric Varley 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, & which Benn was not able to contest because he was not an MP. He was a prominent supporter of the 1984-1985 miners' strike & 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 & 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 & was defeated again. In the first Gulf War he was active in the anti-war movement & 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 & 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.
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 & 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, & 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, & 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 International Monetary Fund, the World Bank & the European Commission remain unelected & unaccountable to those whose lives they affect daily.
On September 27, 2005 Benn was taken ill at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton & taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital after being treated by paramedics at the Brighton Centre. Benn reportedly fell & 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".
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 & to reject replacing the Trident missile & submarines with a new system. He spoke to the demonstrators in the rally afterwards along with other politicians & journalists including George Galloway & members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
A Daily Politics Show poll in January 2007 selected Benn as the UK's "Political hero" with 38.22% of the vote, beating Baroness Thatcher with 35.3% & five other contenders including Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party; Claire Short, independent MP; Neil Kinnock, previous Labour Party leader; Norman Tebbit, previous Conservative Party chairman & Shirley Williams, one of the 'gang of four' who founded the Social Democratic Party. Tony Benn backs the left wing MP John McDonnell to be leader of the Labour Party
In 1983 he wanted to nationalise the top British 100 companies, of wealth, and almost was elected deputy labour leader on this platform, when they were leading polls, just a while earlier,
The 1983 manifesto was left wing although Labour lost, they finished ahead of the SDP Alliance coalition which won them nay votes, they planned big investment in public services, big training, repeal Tory union laws, raise benefits, sadly withdrawel from the EU, ending nuclear weapons for Britain, ending private schools state aided advantages, loads of things, when you look at though it in some ways was not that different to what Labour still debate in the 2007 deputy leader election, ending private school advantages, and just undoing some Tory stuff, now Labour support the EU though, So a great left wing future is still possible, This site was finished in June 2007. His son was the fave to win the Labour Deputy leadership at that stage, but it turned out he finished 4th out of 6 contenders, but he got many votes, He has been Secretary of State for International Development in the cabinet beforehand, and since 2003. This site was finished in June 2007.
A game where you have to play to win a US style presidential election, if you win you become the president & if you lose you lose, great fun.