TONY Benn never made it to the leadership of the Labour Party, but he was the undisputed leader of British Left Wing politics.
I interviewed Tony Benn several times and everything he said made sense. In fact what he often said made so much sense that it was ignored, even by the masters of his own party.
The trouble was Tony Benn found
himself preaching to the converted
As the 20th century was in its final years, Labour was closing its own door on the style and doctrines of old Labour values. New Labour was ushered in and Clause Four, the backbone of the old guard, was ushered out by a different brand of politician: Tony Blair.
It wasn’t a case of abandonment, it was a case of making Labour electable, but to achieve the keys to Number 10, Labour had to sell its soul. These days there is so little between Labour and its old Tory adversary that to most people it matters little who occupies Downing Street.
The one-time aristocrat Anthony Wedgewood Benn entered politics at a time when the Labour Party stood shoulder to shoulder with Britain’s “great unwashed” the millions of working class people in factories, in steelworks and down pits. In the Labour Party of the 1960s and 1970s, Benn was one of many Parliamentary allies, an army of politicians fighting the causes of the workers.
As the economic and social landscapes changed there was dwindling need for such firebrand, let’s-roll-up-our-sleeves, true-red politics, and Tony Benn’s bedfellows became fewer and fewer.
Still, even after he stood down from Parliament in 2001, in order to “spend more time with politics”, he carried on the clarion call with inspirational speeches at rallies in Liverpool and many other dyed-in-the-wool Labour heartlands.
Addressing a rally in Liverpool
It was hard to disagree, even in the last decade, with Tony Benn if you were lucky to catch him at one of these great, razor-sharp orations.
But now there was nobody to implement his well-thought out ideas and suggestions. His audiences became the rump of left wing socialist groups who would hang on to every word he said, and applaud their own chosen King of Socialism.
The trouble was Tony Benn found himself preaching to the converted.
He used intellect and wisdom to convey his ideas, in the same way comrade and possible heir-apparent Dennis Skinner uses wit and well-placed one liners to hit home the messages as one of the few remaining red-flag flyers on the Commons benches.
Today’s MPs on the same row will insist they are the party’s modern army, protecting and guarding socialist ideals. But what they are protecting (sic) is a different world to that which the likes of Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, stood up for.
To this end, there will be no turning back of the clock and over the coming hours and days the great and the good of the political world will be singing the praises of a man who tirelessly inspired generations of ordinary people.
Such is the often hypocritical world of democratic politics, many of those politicians will shed a TV tear or two for Tony.
But they will dare not implement the things he cried out for in his lifelong quest for a better world.
