Tony Benn

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Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – March 14, 2014) was a British politician, author, and diarist.

He served as a Member of Parliament from 1950 to 2001 general elections and as a Cabinet minister in Harold Wilson and James Callaghan's Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s.

Born a moderate, he was identified as being on the party's hard left from the 1980s to today, and was widely seen as a leader of political socialism within the group.

He attempted to remain in the House of Commons and later campaigned for the right to renounce the name, a campaign that ended with the Peerage Act 1963.

He was a vital member of the Fabian Society and served as Chairman from 1964 to 1965.

He served as First Secretary General in 1964-72, and later as a "scientific" Minister of Technology, before retiring from politics in 1974.

He returned to the Cabinet in 1974-1979, first as Secretary of State for Industry and then Secretary of State for Energy.

When James Callaghan took over Wilson as Prime Minister, he kept that position.

He emerged as a leader on the Left-wing of the Labour Party during the 1980s, and the phrase "Bennite" came to be synonymous with radical left-wing politics.

In 1988, he unsuccessfully chastised Neil Kinnock for Labour leadership. After serving in ministerial office, Benn was dubbed "one of the few UK politicians to have shifted more left-wing."

Benn served as the President of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 to his death in 2014.

Early life and family

Benn was born in Westminster, London, on April 3rd, 1925. Michael (1921-1944), who was killed in the Second World War, and David (1928–2017), a Russia and Eastern Europe specialist, were both his brothers. The Benn family moved to Scotland for over 12 months after the Thames floods in January 1928. William Benn, a member of Parliament from 1906 to 1928, served as Secretary of State for India by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, a post he held until the Labour Party's electoral defeat in 1931. William Benn was appointed to the House of Lords, and Tony Benn was subsequently titled The Honourable. In 1942, William Benn was given the title Viscount Stansgate: the new wartime coalition government was short of Labour peers in the upper house, according to William Benn. William Benn, the Secretary of State for Air in the first majority Labour Government in 1945–46.

Margaret Benn, Benn's mother (née Holmes, 1897–1991), was a theologian, feminist, and the founder President of the Congregational Federation. She was a member of the League of the Church Militant, which was the predecessor of the Movement for the Ordination of Women; in 1925, Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was banned for calling for women's ordination. Benn's mother's theology had a major influence on him, as she told him that the Bible was mainly about the prophets and the kings and that he should help the prophets over the kings.

Benn was a committed Christian for more than 30 years. Jesus' teachings had a "radical political importance" on his life, according to him, and he made a distinction between Jesus Christ's "social justice and egalitarianism" who advocated social justice and egalitarianism, as well as "the way in which he is presented by some religious authorities; by popes, archbishops, and bishops who preach Jesus as a justification for their position. Higgins wrote in The Benn Inheritance that Benn was "a socialist whose political role owes much more to Jesus' teaching than Marx's writing." (Indeed, he did not read The Communist Manifesto until he was in his 50s.) "Christian socialism was the driving force of his life," Peter Wilby said, tethering Benn to Labour's "high-minded" founding roots.

Later in his life, Benn addressed topics concerning morality and righteousness, as well as other nonconformism's ethical values. On Desert Island Discs, he said he had been heavily influenced by "the English Dissenters who had left or were excluded from the church, one of whom was his ancestor William Benn." "I've never thought we could know the world we lived in unless we knew the history of the church," Benn told the Catholic Herald, "I've never thought we could know the past of the church." "All political freedoms were won, first and foremost by religious liberty." A few of the claims for media hegemony today, which are based on solid arguments, are those that would have been fought in the religious wars. Well, the satellites are here, and it's all over again. Mrs Thatcher dropped Britain out of UNESCO because she was less prepared than Ronald Reagan to be part of a New World Information Order, people who were not assisting each other without the assistance of Murdoch or Maxwell."

Benn "decided to do without the paraphernalia and theism of organized Christianity," but not without Jesus' teachings," Wilby in the New Statesman. Despite Benn's growing agnostic, he was fascinated by the interconnections between Christianity, radicalism, and socialism. Benn was "as keen a Christian, not Christ the king," according to Wilby, who said in The Guardian that he was "in Jesus the prophet, not Christ the king."

Both of Benn's grandfathers were Liberal Party MPs; his paternal grandfather, John Benn, a successful politician, and later Devonport, was named afterward; and his maternal grandfather, Daniel Holmes, MP for Glasgow Govan, was an author. Benn's relationship with senior politicians of the day goes back to his earliest days. When he was five years old, Ramsay MacDonald was describing himself as a "kind old gentleman [who] lean over me and gave me a chocolate biscuit." I've investigated Labour leaders in a strange way ever since." When Benn was 12, he met former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who later remembered that, as a child, he once shook hands with Mahatma Gandhi in 1931, while his father was India's Prime Minister.

Benn joined and trained with the Home Guard from the age of 16, then recalling in a 2009 speech: "I could use a bayonet, a pistol, a revolver, and I'd have thrown a grenade through the window," he said. Is it a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Benn was enlisted in the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman 2nd Class in July 1943. Michael, his father and elder brother, who was later killed in a tragedy, were both serving in the RAF. On March 10, 1945, he was given an emergency commission as a pilot officer (on probation). Benn served as a pilot in South Africa and Rhodesia as a pilot. He made his first solo flight at RAF Guinea Fowl, an RAF Elementary Flying Training School in Rhodesia, in June 1944. The plane was a Fairchild Cornell built in Canada. "I always felt a sense of fear when I saw the ground approaching me on my first solo, but strangely enough, I didn't get anything but exhilaration." He resigned from his post in August 1945, three months after the Second World War ended in Europe on May 8th and just days before the war with Japan came to an end on September 2nd.

Benn began attending Mr Gladstone's day school near Sloane Square and later studied at New College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1947. Benn's private schooling from Who's Who disappeared in later life. All references to Westminster School were deleted in 1970, but "education—still in progress" was the theme in 1975's edition. Almost all details were omitted except for his name, office as a Member of Parliament, and address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back the draft entry with everything else failed. Benn's entry in the 1977 edition was completely deleted, and when he returned to Who's Who in 1983, he was identified as "Tony Benn" and all references to his work or service record were deleted.

"I had the hope that I would resign my Privy Councillorship, my MA, and all my honorary doctors in order to strip myself of what the world had to offer," Benn said in his diaries. Although Benn admitted that he might be mocked for doing so, he said that "Wedgie Benn" and "the Rt Honourable Anthony Wedgwood Benn" and "all that stuff is impractical." I have been Tony Benn in Bristol for a long time. He said on BBC Radio in October 1973 that he preferred Mr. Tony Benn rather than Anthony Wedgwood Benn, and his book Speeches from 1974 are credited to "Tony Benn." Despite this name change, social historian Alwyn W. Turner writes, "Just as those with a desire to pursue Muhammed Ali by his original name, many papers continue to refer to Tony Benn, or Wedgie in the case of the tabloids, for years to come."

In 1949, Benjamin Bennett met Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States) over tea at Worcester College, Oxford; just nine days after meeting her, he suggested her on a park bench in the city. He purchased the bench from Oxford City Council and arranged it in the garden of their house in Holland Park later. Tony and Caroline had four children—Stephen, Hilary, Melissa, a feminist blogger, and Joshua—and ten grandchildren. After a career as an educator, Caroline Benn died of cancer on November 22, 2000, aged 74.

Both of Benn's children have been involved in Labour Party politics. Stephen, his eldest son, served as an elected member of the Inner London Education Authority from 1986 to 1990. Hilary's second son, who served in parliament in 1983 and 1987, became a Labour MP for Leeds Central in 1999. He was Secretary of State for International Development from 2003 to 2007, then Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs from 2010 to 2010, then serving as Shadow Foreign Secretary (2015–2016). This makes him the third generation of his family to have been a member of the Cabinet, which is a strange occurrence in a modern political family in the United Kingdom. When Emily Benn failed to win East Worthing and Shoreham in 2010, she was the Labour Party's youngest-ever candidate. Benn was a first cousin of Margaret Rutherford, who was once deposed.

Benn and his wife Caroline went vegetarian in 1970, purely for ethical reasons, and they stayed so for the remainder of their lives. Benn cites his son Hilary's decision to become vegetarian as a contributing factor in his own decision to adopt a vegetarian diet.

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Early parliamentary career

Benn worked briefly as a BBC Radio producer during the Second World War. After Cripps resigned due to sickness, he was chosen to replace Stafford Cripps as the Labour candidate for Bristol South East on November 1st. On the 30th of November 1950, he gained the position in a by-election. Anthony Crosland helped him obtain the seat when he was the MP for nearby South Gloucestershire at the time. For one day, Benn became "Baby of the House," the youngest MP for one day, although Thomas Teevan, who was two years younger, took his oath the next day. In 1951, he became the "Baby" again, although Teevan was not re-elected. Benn was not affiliated with the youthful left wing group around Aneurin Bevan in the 1950s and had middle-of-the-road or soft left views.

Benn, a Bristol Bus Boycott, was instrumental in organising the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott protesting the Bristol Omnibus Company's colour bar against hiring Black British and British Asian drivers. "I stay off the buses, even if I have to find a bike," Benn said, and Labour leader Harold Wilson said at an anti-apartheid rally in London that he was "glad" that so many Bristolians support the [boycott] campaign, and that he "wish[ed] them every success."

When Winston Churchill increased the number of Labour peers to support political positions in the House of Lords, Benn's older brother Michael, who was still serving in the RAF, wanted to enter the priesthood and had no objections to inheriting a peerage. Michael was later killed while on active service in the Second World War, and this left Benn as the heir-apparent to the peerage. Several unsuccessful attempts to renounce the succession were unsuccessful.

Lord Stansgate died in November 1960. Benn was accepted as a peer in the House of Commons but not allowed to vote. Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, the Speaker of the Commons, did not permit him to speak from the bar of the House of Commons in April 1961, just months after the by-election had been called. Benn, who was retaining his seat in a by-election triggered by his successor's resignation on May 4, 1961, tried to hold his position in a contest that had been ongoing to protect his peerage. Despite being disqualified from serving his term, he was re-elected. An election jury found that the voters were fully aware that Benn had been disqualified and had announced the appointment was won by the Conservative runner-up, Malcolm St Clair, who was at the time also the heir presumptive to a peerage.

Benn's campaign lasted outside Parliament. The Conservative Government of the time, which was in a similar or similar situation to Benn's (i.e., those who were likely to be eligible or had already applied for writs of summons), amended the rule within two years. The Peerage Act 1963, which allowed lifetime disclaimers of peerages, became statute shortly after 6 p.m. on July 31, 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his name, doing so at 6.22 p.m. on the day. St Clair kept a vow he made at the time of his election before he accepted the Manor of Northstead's Stewardship, effectively ending his service from the House of Commons (outright resignation is not possible). After winning a by-election on August 20, 1963, Benn returned to the Commons.

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