Tony Benn - The Best of Benn

Contents

The definitive collection of diaries, memoirs, speeches, letters and other writings by Tony Benn.

THE BEST OF BENN follows the career of Tony Benn, one of the 20th centurys most charismatic politicians, through the speeches, articles and interviews made and given over seven decades in the House of Commons, the Morning Star, the Guardian and to conferences and workers.

From the baby of the House, to a widower in his eighties touring the country, this volume showcases Tony Benns brand of electrifiying speeches, thoughtful journalism and passionate advocacy of often unconventional causes, as well as his fascination with technological change and philosophical dilemmas.

Radical statesman and Member of Parliament for over fifty years, Tony Benn is the pre-eminent diarist of his generation. His political activity continued after retirement through mass meetings, broadcasts and in more recent years through social media. A widower since 2000, Tony Benn died at his home in London on 14th March 2014.

The Regeneration of Britain
Speeches
Arguments for Socialism
Arguments for Democracy
Parliament, People and Power
The Sizewell Syndrome
Fighting Back: 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
More Time for Politics: Diaries 20012007
Dare to be a Daniel
Letters to my Grandchildren
A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine: The Last Diaries

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781473518018

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Hutchinson 2014

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Copyright The Estate of Tony Benn 2014

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

Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Hutchinson
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091958923

I STARTED WORKING for Tony Benn at the very end of 1985, intending to stay a few weeks transcribing his diary tapes while waiting to take up a proper job. I stayed for twenty-eight years, and during those years edited ten volumes of diaries, managed the interconnected archive of his lifes work and looked after a succession of young men and women some still in their teens who passed through his basement office as work-experience students.

Everyone who knew Tony Benn will remember above all, I hope, his sense of fun and his irreverence towards authority. I have tried to reflect this aspect of his character in this collection through the inclusion, between the serious argument, of extracts from his diaries that show this mischievous side, which did not desert him despite periods of extreme political stress. In 1990 he and fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn slipped down into the Crypt chapel of the House of Commons armed with a Black & Decker drill, rawlplugs and screws to attach a brass plaque commemorating Emily Wilding Davison to the door of the cupboard where she hid in 1911. No permission was sought, or granted, of course, and the plaque is now part of parliamentary folklore.

A collection of speeches and articles that is intended to show the extent of Tonys interests and his mastery of communication is a challenge, not least because issues, as he would call them, that seemed crucially important in one period often become quickly forgotten or difficult to appreciate in another. For that reason some of the great parliamentary set pieces, such as his challenge to the Speaker over the Zircon spy-satellite controversy, and the BelgranoPonting affair, have not been included, as they would require too much contextual explanation. Conversely I have included some topics more than once, because of their importance to Tony in his own parliamentary, ministerial and social career. For example, the case he made against the European Union (as it became) was restated at different times from the 1950s to the end of the twentieth century as he refined and developed his arguments with each change in the nature of that political entity. Likewise his interest in industrial democracy and workers control, and the connections between Christianity and socialism, took on different hues over the years. I have also included several biting journalistic pieces (such as one on the hanging of a prisoner in Bristol jail in December 1963) that carried a wider point or lesson. Between 1964 and 1979, when he was a Labour government minister, most of Tonys thoughtful and analytical speeches were necessarily made outside Parliament.

The chapters are arranged to mirror the main phases of his life, politically and personally, from his experience of the war as a fifteen-to-nineteen-year-old and arrival in Parliament as a young man, and his rise through the Labour Party and government; through the low years of the 1980s, when I first knew him and he seemed like a caged tiger; his rebirth as a diarist; and his later years as a widower and a loving and entertaining grandfather.

Working in Tonys office, in the basement of his Holland Park family home, was never comfortable. It was a health-and-safety-free zone, which his friends in the Fire Brigades Union would have evacuated immediately. There were burglar bars at the windows, and draughts entered through every crack. But it had a charm and a fascination for visitors and politically aware young people, with its piles of documents and rows of artefacts, all meticulously organised by Tony himself for many years. Once I started to work permanently in the basement office I set these youngsters (known as the Teabags) the task of listing the typescripts, the Hansards, the press cuttings and the audio/video recordings that comprised the tens of thousands of items in the Benn archives, and which reflected Tonys lifetime of service to his electorate, his constituency (Bristol and then Chesterfield), the House of Commons and audiences around the world. I am grateful to Max Shanly, a trade-union-sponsored student from Ruskin College, Oxford, for all the help and advice he gave me in finding some of the extracts for inclusion in the book.

Ruth Winstone
September 2014