Benn Tony - More time for politics: diaries 2001-2007

TONY
BENN

More Time for Politics

Diaries 20012007

Selected and edited by Ruth Winstone

HUTCHINSON
London

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409063209

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Hutchinson 2007

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Copyright Tony Benn 2007

Tony Benn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hutchinson

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By the same author

The Regeneration of Britain

Speeches

Arguments for Socialism

Arguments for Democracy

Parliament, People and Power The Sizewell Syndrome

Fighting Back: Speaking Out for Socialism in the Eighties A Future for Socialism

Common Sense (with Andrew Hood)

Free Radical

Years of Hope: Diaries 19401962

Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 19631967

Office Without Power: Diaries 19681972

Against the Tide: Diaries 19731976

Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 19771980

The End of an Era: Diaries 19801990

The Benn Diaries: Single Volume Edition 19401990

Free at Last! Diaries 19912001

Dare to be a Daniel

First section

With President Jimmy Carter, South Africa, 2007

With Hugo Chavez at the GLA, 2006

With Gorbachev at the TUC

With Kofi and Nane Annan, London

Stephen Benn with President Clinton

With Archbishop Tutu at the BBC

Jim Callaghans 90th birthday

With Jack Jones, 2002

With Rodney Bickerstaffe

With Jeremy Corbyn commemorating Hiroshima

With Roy Bailey (Adrian Paul)

With Billy Bragg at Tolpuddle

George Bush and Tony Blair, Camp David, February 2001 ( Reuters/Corbis)

Decapitated statue of Saddam Hussein, April 2003 ( Patrick Roberts/Corbis)

David Kelly, July 2003 ( Getty Images)

Evening Standard headline, 11 September 2001 ( Getty Images)

Alastair Campbell arriving at Hutton Enquiry, August 2003 ( AFP/Getty Images)

William Hague, 2001 ( Dan Chung/Reuters/Corbis)

Iain Duncan Smith, 2005 ( Reuters/Corbis)

Michael Howard, 2005 ( Dylan Martinez/Reuters/Corbis)

David Cameron, 2006 ( Gideon Mendel/Corbis)

Gordon Brown, Scottish Labour Party Conference, 2005 ( Jeff J. Mitchell/ Reuters/Corbis)

Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley, Alex Salmond, 2007 ( Mark Pearce/Pacemaker Press International Belfast/Corbis)

Jack Straw, United Nations Security Council Meeting, March 2003 ( Jason Szenes/Corbis)

David Blunkett leaves House of Commons, November 2004 ( Toby Melville/Reuters/Corbis)

Tam Dalyell, 2004 ( Topham/PA)

John McDonnell, 2007 ( Getty Images)

Walter Wolfgang, Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 2005 ( Toby Melville/Reuters/Corbis)

Brian Haw (Alisdair MacDonald)

Meeting Saddam Hussein, 2003

Second section

With David Gentleman (John Rees in background)

Lindsey German of Stop the War

George Galloway

Ken Livingstone

Stop the War rally, Trafalgar Square, November 2001

Rally in Hyde Park, March 2003

Tony Benn in the Left Field, Glastonbury

An Audience with Tony Benn (Richard Baker)

Blairs War, Trafalgar Square (Kyoka Takamura Thompson)

Tony Benn at anti-war rally in New York

Tony Blairs Blood Price

Peace doves for Vanunu

The Benns at Christmas

Concordes last flight, October 2003 ( Getty Images)

With David Davis at the Royal Festival Hall debate

With Rory Bremner at Hatchards

Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua Benn with their father

With Hilary

With Joshua

Melissa Benn (Nobuhiko-Ono)

Caroline Benns plaque

Ruth Winstone (Ray Wells)

With Natasha Kaplinsky

David and June Benn (Frances Nestor)

Benjamin Zephaniah and Jemma Redgrave at Tony Benns 80th birthday

With Saffron Burrows (Andy Gotts)

Benn family at Stansgate

Cartoons

Unless otherwise attributed, all photographs are from the Benn Collection. Every effort has been made to clear copyright in the illustrations and the author and publishers will be pleased to hear of any inadvertent breach.

Before my wife Caroline died in 2000, she suggested that when I left the House of Commons it should be to devote more time to politics. The following year, I did indeed retire to do that.

This book continues my published diaries, which in totality extend from 1940, when I was fifteen, to 2007 the year when I reached eighty-two, a span of sixty-seven years.

For around fifty of these years I served as an MP, for eleven as a Cabinet Minister and for the majority of these years as an elected member of Labours National Executive Committee which I joined in 1959. The full unedited diaries now amount to around fifteen million words and the published diaries, though they have had to be sharply cut, kept as faithful as possible to the original.