Tony Benn has died, his family have just announced.
The reluctant Viscount Stansgate was aged 88. He had been ill for some time.
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Now, unlike Bob Crowe, there is no way on earth anyone can accuse Tony Benn of being a hypocrite. Disagreed with most of his views, but admired him deeply.
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Absolutely, Z. Man of great principle and integrity. His writing is wonderfully lucid and readable too.
He lost his divisive quality with age - and, perhaps, his withdrawal from active politics. In 1981, it was probably his candidacy for the Labour leadership that kept out Denis Healey and let in Michael Foot. Healey could have won the 1983 election and saved us from the worst of the Thatcher-Reagan era.
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>> In 1981, it was probably his candidacy for the Labour leadership that kept out Denis
>> Healey and let in Michael Foot. Healey could have won the 1983 election and saved
>> us from the worst of the Thatcher-Reagan era.
>>
I love people who know how history could have been, if only...
From what I remember in 1983 not only were most people fed up of industrial conflict and thought it was about time for someone to stand up and take the unions down a peg or two and we had also just shown the Argies what happened to countries that invaded other countries just to deflect public opinion at home. Excuse the DM type tones but you know what I mean.
Nobody could have won an election for Labour in 1983, IMHO.
I believe politics is far poorer for the loss of two such different people as Tony Benn and Margaret Thatcher, whether you agreed with them or not, they were both "principle" politicians at heart.
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I love people who know how history could have been, if only...
You're overlooking my 'probably' and 'could have'. But even my teenage self could see that Foot wasn't electable.
From what I remember in 1983 not only were most people fed up of industrial conflict and thought it was about time for someone to stand up and take the unions down a peg or two...
Thatcher did the essential parts of that in her first term - and we had the 3-4m unemployed to prove it.
...and we had also just shown the Argies....
With, as we now know, a great deal of luck.
Excuse the DM type tones...
More of the Sun in that, I'd have said.
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Glancing quickly at the list of topics in this section, I did a double take when I thought I saw "Tony Benn dies in a bar fight".
He was a man I admired, and he lived a long and no doubt enjoyable life. Good innings, well played that man.
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>> He had been ill for some time.
>>
Parts of his name were amputated many years ago.
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>> Parts of his name were amputated many years ago.
Pretty common political affectation across all three cheeks.
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Wonderful man IMO - vegetarian, teatotal too, like me :)
RIP
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A principled man. Something that seems so rare in his chosen profession.
Very much admired.
RIP
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His political views never altered throughout his life. That's either a man of deep principles or one who never learned from his mistakes.
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>> His political views never altered throughout his life. That's either a man of deep principles
>> or one who never learned from his mistakes.
He certainly did not mellow or drift to centre with age. Several of the obits though point out that he supported centre right Gaitskell over Bevan for the leadership only abandoning him for Wilson after Gaitskell's failed move to abolish Clause 4.
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The political system is always improved by someone who honestly holds and stands by their beliefs.
There was little in his convictions that I would agree with, but he stated his views, and lived by them.
The system, and the country, needs more people like that.
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Panegyrics for a man who actually achieved nothing!
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Nothing big, maybe, but he had a very good reputation as a constituency MP.
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>> Panegyrics for a man who actually achieved nothing!
Mean.
I believe he was known for paying a lot more attention to his actual job than the majority of ministers. Sir Humphrey probably got less past him than most of his contemporaries.
When he was PMG, he turned up at his office on a regular basis. The management told him it was unnecessary, his predecessors only came once a month or so for lunch with the board.
Being outside the mainstream, he was never to be very successful with his own broad policies - but that is not the same as being ineffective.
Harold said Benn "immatured with age". Looking down the other end of the telescope, I would say he resisted institutionalisation better than most.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 14 Mar 14 at 12:41
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>> Panegyrics for a man who actually achieved nothing!
His part in keeping the Concorde project going has been reported in the obits. Less reported has been his action on being appointed Technology Minister in 1978 to get the mothballed HS146 (later BAe146/Avro RJ) moving again.
Britain's most successful turbine airliner, reducing the Viscount to silver medal status,
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>>Panegyrics for a man who actually achieved nothing!
Became known for the honesty and consistency of his views. Lived by his own standards. The absolute opposite of a hypocrite.
We should all achieve so much.
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>> Panegyrics for a man who actually achieved nothing!
For a rabid socialist he was surprisingly un ludditish and laid the foundations of modernising the post office and post office telephones and tried to rationalise and push forward the British computer industry
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 14 Mar 14 at 13:53
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I read his diaries as they came out. Really fascinating, and much more interesting than any other political memoir I've read, being virtually a transcript of contemporaneous recordings he made daily.
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I enjoyed his diaries as broadcast iirc.
I loved Tony Benn. To me he was the epitome of that rare animal - a principled politician - matched by Michael Foot and Margaret Thatcher.
He was also a clear and nearly always accurate warning of how successful any policy would be. If he supported a cause it would usually fail: see CND, worker co-operatives, ICL, Britsih Leyland (merged under his Ministry),the NO Campaign to EC membership,and abolition of the House of Lords.
There were exceptions: he was against the invasion of Iraq - but there his support helped - in my view - damn the cause by association - and Tony Blair - whom he regarded as the "worst PM of the UK"...
I doubt we shall see many like him again.
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>> vegetarian, teatotal too, like me :)
But are you enough of a gent to keep a bottle of whiskers in the house to make thirsty hacks feel at home while you are sipping your tea, Perro? He was, bless him.
I'm a bit surprised that some of those who idiotically call Bob Crow a 'hypocrite' haven't been banging on about Tony Benn being a champagne socialist. Some people used to claim that his wife, who was American, was politically more left wing than he was. It's also true that he moved leftward as he got older, in a way that some may have thought opportunist.
We used to see him in the street sometimes as he lived quite near us. On one occasion he was looking unusually grim and unhappy. Later we worked out that his wife had just fallen seriously ill, and that would have been the reason.
He's been living for several years in some sheltered housing where a friend of ours also lives. The other residents were terribly excited and vied with each other to get him to come to tea.
Manatee's post reminds me that when being interviewed he would make his own tape of the interview in case he needed to counter misquotations.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 14 Mar 14 at 13:23
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I read his diaries a few years ago, and couldn't help liking him despite disagreeing.
My father and Benn shared doctors at one time, long ago when Benn was reported to be suffering from a mystery illness. My father naughtily asked what was really wrong with him.
Obviously the doctor wouldn't say, apart from remarking that a little less tea would help.
Teatotal was the word, reputedly.
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>>But are you enough of a gent to keep a bottle of whiskers in the house to make thirsty hacks feel at home while you are sipping your tea, Perro
Yep, there's booze in the cupboard as it appens Sire, wouldn't bother me if somebuddy lit a snout in here either.
Just lit the fire as it's 7° up here FFS! - musta inhaled enough fumes to last me all day :(
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>> But are you enough of a gent to keep a bottle
>> >> Yep, there's booze in the cupboard as it appens
I knew you were really Perro. But don't get too well-known or it will cost you.
:o}
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Politics was a much more interesting country back in the seventies and eighties. Whether you agreed with them or not, the likes of Benn, Powell and Foot were men who didn't sell their souls to the party spin doctors and fought for their principles even when it meant torpedoing their own ambitions.
Alas, today we're stuck with 600 plus Jim Hackers, men terrified of being associated with anything remotely controversial.
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>> Alas, today we're stuck with 600 plus Jim Hackers, men terrified of being associated with
>> anything remotely controversial.
>>
except for the continuing inability to keep it in their trousers in a few cases
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God save us from "interesting politics" I'll settle for competent but a bit boring any day of the week.
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>> God save us from "interesting politics" I'll settle for competent but a bit boring any day of the week.
Amen to that. It's another thing I often say.
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>> God save us from "interesting politics" I'll settle for competent but a bit boring any
>> day of the week.
>>
Sadly, though, the majority of the current crop are a bit boring but a fair way from competent which why there is such a disconnect between politicians and the general, potential, electorate which is not quite as daft as the political elite think.
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I've just remembered something else which hasn't been mentioned yet as far as I know. When you went to his house at the top end of Holland Park Avenue near Notting Hill Gate, you had to pass a horrendous filthy bearded geezer who lived among the Benn dustbins under a sort of thatched roof thing down by the gate.
I don't think the guy was mentioned in the interview. But his demeanour alone made it clear that he had more right there than you did.
Chapeau, I mean.
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>> Chapeau, I mean.
That was in the early eighties I think. It's not in the nature of tramp types to last a long time in one place. A year earlier or a year later the horrendous filthy bearded geezer might not have been there.
But my point is that he was tolerated by the Benns. They probably gave him food. Actually I wouldn't put it past them to have let him in the house from time to time.
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>> his house at the top end of Holland Park Avenue near
>> Notting Hill Gate, you had to pass a horrendous filthy bearded geezer who lived among
>> the Benn dustbins under a sort of thatched roof thing down by the gate.
The 'tramp' was tolerated by AWB and I believe he made the press at one time.
Edit
I thought so,
Link thing
tinyurl.com/odx45pl
Last edited by: Duncan on Sat 15 Mar 14 at 07:48
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I did remember him making the press at the time. It's just that no one has mentioned him following TB's death.
Thanks for that Duncan.
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D'you ever listen to LBC Radio, Sire?
Ken Livingston and David Mellor front the Saturday morning spot, and of course the discussion has been about Benn and Crow.
You can listen to it on-line if you can't afford a DAB radio: app.musicradio.com/lbcnational/on-air/player/
They are gassing about Miliband now I do believe.
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.
Last edited by: Arjades on Sat 15 Mar 14 at 11:19
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Many have said they disagreed with Tony Benn's politics but respected the consistency of his attitude.
Actually if you reed a decent broadsheet obit you will see that his views were far from unwavering and that like other politicians he trimmed this way and that.
I suppose one has to admit that he was always a Labour supporter and always a 'shoshalisht' though. Nevertheless in a way his espousal of the Trotskyist far-left assault on the party was a mistake rather like Enoch Powell's, but the other way round.
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I am informed by a friend in Chesterfield that Benn was a remarkably good, efficient and committed constituency MP; he says that it was always obvious when dealing with him that he took the trouble to research your issues in considerable detail,and give a prompt reply.
When you read his credentials this is not surprising, but a credit to him none the less.
I've just listened to David Davies' tribute to Benn on R4; well worth spending an hour on.
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Some learned gent on the wireless this morning said that if Benn had gained power, Grate Britain would be akin to N. Korea by now.
:}
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>> akin to N. Korea by now.
Too late. Cold baths, early morning organised gym, several hours of boring stuff designed to make you stupid, more physical jerks, frugal meal, two more hours of ideological carp, patriotic song and compulsory lights out until dawn... that stuff was over for us by 1950. Then TV and snacks crept in.
Mind you it would have worked wonders for our figures. But it's pointless to yearn for what can never be...
:o}
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"Cold baths, early morning organised gym, several hours of boring stuff designed to make you stupid, more physical jerks, frugal meal, two more hours of ideological carp, patriotic song and compulsory lights out until dawn."
and then you left public school.
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>> and then you left public school.
No. I was only 12 in 1950. What I meant was that the whole country used to be like that in the WW2 period and its aftermath.
Don't you remember CGN? I went to public school in the mid-fifties, for two years. It was still a bit austere admittedly. But by the time you are 16 or 17 you have developed a certain cunning and ruthlessness where your own well-being is concerned. You have enough sense to burn furniture, easily come by in schools, to keep warm for example...
Heh heh...
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>>
>> >> and then you left public school.
>>
>> No. I was only 12 in 1950. What I meant was that the whole country
>> used to be like that in the WW2 period and its aftermath.
>>
>> Don't you remember CGN? I went to public school in the mid-fifties, for two years.
>> It was still a bit austere admittedly. But by the time you are 16 or
>> 17 you have developed a certain cunning and ruthlessness where your own well-being is concerned.
>> You have enough sense to burn furniture, easily come by in schools, to keep warm
>> for example...
>>
>> Heh heh...
>>
Or, in the dorm, to put water in a nearly empty Andrew's liver salts tin and hammer home the lid and scarper off to the bogs.
Or, to peer hopefully at the steamed up bathroom window where the Headmaster's domestic lady prepared for bed.
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>> >> akin to N. Korea by now.
>>
>> Too late. Cold baths, early morning organised gym, several hours of boring stuff designed to
>> make you stupid, more physical jerks, frugal meal, two more hours of ideological carp, patriotic
>> song and compulsory lights out until dawn... that stuff was over for us by 1950.
>> Then TV and snacks crept in.
>>
>> Mind you it would have worked wonders for our figures. But it's pointless to yearn
>> for what can never be...
>>
>> :o}
That bloke Billy Butlin had a lot to answer for!
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>>Cold baths, early morning organised gym, several hours of boring stuff designed to make you stupid, more physical jerks, frugal meal, two more hours of ideological carp, patriotic song and compulsory lights out until dawn...
I had a basinful of that in 1968 while holidaying in HMDC Send, I found it quite hard-going being as I was a lanky stick insect reared on sugar Frosties.
Did me no arm though, and I look back to it with a certain fondness in many ways, like old soldiers do about their army discipline - which stays with them 'til they croak.
I'd vote for a Bennite at the next general election as I'm a natural socialist, a drop of totalitarian Stalinism would go some way to cleanse this damned country IMO.
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>> Cold baths, early morning organised gym, several hours of boring stuff designed to
make you stupid, more physical jerks, frugal meal, two more hours of ideological carp, patriotic song and compulsory lights out until dawn... that stuff was over for us by 1950.
Sounds like basic training when I was doing National Service!
"Never did me no 'arm".
Last edited by: Duncan on Sun 16 Mar 14 at 09:11
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I did a year at a Catholic boarding school when I was nine. It instilled in me a lifelong contempt and hatred of nuns and sowed the first seeds of doubt in the existence of God, or at least whatever God these people claimed to worship.
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No one seems to have taken in what I said: that after the war the whole country was like Dotheboys Hall or Perro's slammer, but without the jolly Billy Bunter japes people seem to think made life bearable in boarding schools.
Only in the mid-fifties did the pall of ghastly austerity begin to lift. Anyway that's the way I remember it.
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My 4 brothers + 1 sister were Bjorn before (don't mention) the war, whereas I was born in '52 so had it soft compared to them, although I can still lay claim to using torn-up newspaper in the bog, ice on the inside of my bedroom windows, coal in the bath AND in the bedroom cupboard.
I was listening to John Pinar and (that awful) Joe Brand on Radio 5 Dead while I was washing my balls, and mention was made of East Street (S. London) market which I well remember, from 50 years ago.
It's quite a long street market, and apparently if one walks from end to end today, one will see and hear all manner of folk from the 4 corners of the world.
Is it just nostalgia? .. a sign of, erm, getting old on? .. I look back on my regular excursions to East Lane, as we knew it, with much fondness - the way I remember it ... just as well I'm down ere really.
Last edited by: Arjades on Sun 16 Mar 14 at 11:43
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>> I can still lay claim to using torn-up newspaper in the bog, ice on the inside of my bedroom windows, coal in the bath AND in the bedroom cupboard.
Needs must when the devil drives Perro. Anyone can remember newspaper as bumf and the beautiful ice patterns made by condensation inside bedroom windows in cold weather... have to admit though that my proletarian qualifications don't quite extend to coal in the bath - an image much cherished by early Caribbean immigrants to this country who all claim to have experienced it in houses they got cheap lodgings in - let alone the bedroom cupboards... are you sure that isn't a memory of some stroke pulled by yr elder siblings on their way up the greasy South London pole? ('We copied the key to the back gate of the gasworks... 200 quid's worth of anthracite, evil Bob's given us 50 for it, don't tell Dad... here's five bob for sweeties, shtum okay Doggins?' I so hope it was like that).
Oddly, bog paper always used to be very hard to find in socializing or Marxizing countries or those in the Soviet orbit. Also, the plugs to basins and baths were always absent.
After a couple of visits even to Algeria one learned to take several bog rolls and a couple of plugs, or a one-size-fits-all flat jobbie. Even washing in cold water is better than nothing and if you are already a filthy evil infidel you don't want to rub it in by smelling like a goat.
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Remember ice on inside of windows aged 3-4 in winter of 63. Dad got CH installed after that so no more until sharing grotty flats in London early eighties.
Probably last experienced in 1990-91 when patchy warm air heating conspired with single glazing. UPVC d/g windows installed in spring 91 saw it off.
Stealing sink plugs was a joke in communal accom thirty years ago, Only need for a 'universal' today is on campsites.
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>> Stealing sink plugs was a joke in communal accom thirty years ago, Only need for a 'universal' today is on campsites.
Or in a socialist or communist-inspired country.
You wouldn't catch me dead on a campsite.
'Joke' eh? Oh ho ho ho ho....
People are such idiots.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 16 Mar 14 at 20:25
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>>Even washing in cold water is better than nothing and if you are already a filthy evil infidel you don't want to rub it in by smelling like a goat.
SWMBO larfs :o)
>>are you sure that isn't a memory of some stroke pulled by yr elder siblings on their way up the greasy South London pole?
Most definitely Sire, I can still 'see' that bedroom, one double where my elder sister and I slept, and a single bed where my late brother slept. In the far left-hand corner was a built-in floor to ceiling cupboard where coal was kept in my early years - we moved to Camberwell from there when I was 9.
I also remember having regular baths - every Sunday, whether I needed it or not, so, the coal in the bath musta bin a very rare occurrence, probably due to a strike or shortage c1957/8
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I was born in Yorkshire.
We lived in a shoe box in't middle o' road!
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>> I was born in Yorkshire.
>>
>> We lived in a shoe box in't middle o' road!
I was always told the northerners wore clogs. The shoe box must have been donated by a rich southerner.
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Well.
When I say a shoe box...
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Tony Benn Dies - Duncan
