[160] Benn died at home on 14 March 2014, surrounded by his family, less than a month shy of his 89th birthday. "[99] Ultimately Kinnock won the contest, formally replacing Foot as party leader in October of that year. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum. He was 88. I did my maiden speech on nationalising the steel industry, put down the first motion for the boycott of South African goods, and resigned from the shadow cabinet in 1958 because of their support for nuclear weapons. stood and what he stood for. Tony Benn (9 June 1983 – 1 March 1984), The Rt Hon. you disagreed with him.". He was an active member of the Fabian Society and served as Chairman from 1964 to 1965. British history, in 1975, over membership of what is now called the In recent years he had been a central member of the anti-war ), I.B. American Michael Moore dedicates his book Mike's Election Guide 2008 (ISBN 978-0141039817) to Benn, with the words: "For Tony Benn, keep teaching us". LONDON — Tony Benn, a committed British socialist who irritated and fascinated Britons through a political career spanning more than five decades and … Benn ascribed his move to the left to four lessons: As regards the power of industrialists and bankers, Benn remarked: Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes by the unions is minuscule. In September 2007, Benn called for the government to hold a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty. [27] The aircraft was a Canadian-built Fairchild Cornell. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, doing so at 6.22 pm that day. A fuller transcript of that speech, in which he called the Home Guard "Dad's Army", is given in the section "Retirement and final years". "[158] This was revealed in 2002 with the release of his 1990–2001 diaries. The son of a Labour Cabinet minister who became a Former cabinet minister Peter Hain said: "Tony Benn was a giant campaigner. During the Gulf War, Benn visited Baghdad in order to try and persuade Saddam Hussein to release the hostages who had been captured.[106]. [64] Harold Wilson later reprimanded Benn for this speech, accusing him of losing Labour seats in the 1970 general election.[65]. Twitter: "Tony Benn was a magnificent writer, speaker and [179] The first was placed in 1995. [52] Continuing to maintain his right to abandon his peerage, Benn fought to retain his seat in a by-election caused by his succession on 4 May 1961. Beneath the UK's Parliament, the veteran MP and former peer has placed a plaque with a photo of a leading suffragette who died after throwing herself beneath the king's horse. It did not give a cause for death. It did not give a cause for death. rare individuals who added a word to the English language. In 2001 Benn stepped down from parliament in order to "spend As he highlighted, these minutes resulted in the 1931 split of the Labour Party in which MacDonald and his allies formed a National Government with Conservatives and Liberals. If we do not speak up now against the filthy and obscene racialist propaganda ... the forces of hatred will mark up their first success and mobilise their first offensive...Enoch Powell has emerged as the real leader of the Conservative Party. EU. heartfelt thanks to all the NHS staff and carers who have looked He made public several episodes of audio diaries he made during his time in Parliament and after retirement, entitled The Benn Tapes, broadcast originally on BBC Radio 4. speaker. "[89], In British politics during this period, the term "Bennism" came into use to describe the conviction politics, economic, social and political ideology of Tony Benn; and an exponent or advocate of Bennism was regarded as a "Bennite". Benn later attributed the collapse of the Wilson government to cuts enforced on the UK by global capital, in particular the International Monetary Fund. Upon taking the oath on 4 December 1950[47] Benn became "Baby of the House", the youngest MP, for one day, being succeeded by Thomas Teevan, who was two years younger but took his oath a day later. [127] In February 2004 and 2008, he was re-elected President of the Stop the War Coalition. [164][165] His body had lain in rest at St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster the night before the funeral service. ", Additional reporting by the Press Association. inspirational speaker and person: will be deeply missed. ", Lucy Powell, one of the party's newest MPs added: "Very sorry to 'He will be remembered as a champion of the powerless, a great parliamentarian and a conviction politician. Whatever your thoughts on death may be, I hope you enjoy these random humorous quotes about mortality, death, … Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on 20 August 1963. Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Former British MP Tony Benn passed away on Friday of natural causes. [166] The service ended with the singing of "The Red Flag". Tony and Caroline had four children—Stephen, Hilary, Melissa, a feminist writer, and Joshua—and 10 grandchildren. Wilson, the first of a series of Labour leaders to clash with Benn, In early 2008, Benn appeared on Scottish singer-songwriter Colin MacIntyre's album The Water, reading a poem he had written himself. Conservatives Daniel Hannan, Douglas Carswell and David Cameron praised Benn in 2008. [110] He presented an account of his proposal in Common Sense: A New Constitution for Britain. The final proof of Powell's power is that Heath dare not attack him publicly, even when he says things that disgust decent Conservatives. eBook Shop: The Best of Benn Cornerstone Digital von Tony Benn als Download. Benn cited the decision of his son Hilary to become vegetarian as an important factor in his own decision to adopt a vegetarian diet. The decision of several soft left MPs, including Neil Kinnock, to abstain triggered the split of the Socialist Campaign Group from the left of the Tribune Group. "[22][23], In July 1943, Benn enlisted in the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman 2nd Class. In 1970 all references to Westminster School were removed,[32] and in the 1975 edition his entry stated "Education—still in progress". He was also the honorary president of the Goldsmiths Students' Union, who successfully campaigned for him to retract comments dismissing the Julian Assange rape allegations. 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, she was rebuked by Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women. "the most dangerous man in Britain". Government is responsible for explaining what it has done and I don't think we were told the truth. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. Viscount Stansgate (* 3. Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. Benn defended his decision insisting that it was "not about personalities, but about policies". It was read in Parliament a number of times until his retirement at the 2001 election, but never achieved a second reading. [90][91][92], In a keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference of 1980, shortly before the resignation of party leader James Callaghan and election of Michael Foot as successor, Benn outlined what he envisaged the next Labour Government would do. "[28], He relinquished his commission with effect from 10 August 1945, three months after the Second World War ended in Europe on 8 May, and just days before the war with Japan ended on 2 September. [8], Benn was for over 30 years a committed Christian. His mother's theology had a profound influence on Benn, as she taught him that the stories in the Bible were based around the struggle between the prophets and the kings and that he ought in his life to support the prophets over the kings, who had power, as the prophets taught righteousness. Benn was born in Westminster, London,[1] on 3 April 1925. Benn withdrew from the second ballot and endorsed Michael Foot; James Callaghan eventually won. [24] His father and elder brother Michael (who was later killed in an accident) were already serving in the RAF. [41] Benn was a first cousin once removed of the actress Margaret Rutherford. He made several unsuccessful attempts to renounce the succession. [16] Wilby also wrote in The Guardian that although former Chancellor Stafford Cripps described Benn as "as keen a Christian as I am myself", Benn wrote in 2005 that he was "a Christian agnostic" who believed "in Jesus the prophet, not Christ the king", specifically rejecting the label of "humanist". You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. [15] Although Benn became more agnostic as he became older, he was intrigued by the interconnections between Christianity, radicalism and socialism. [4] Their father, William Wedgwood Benn, was a Liberal Member of Parliament from 1906 who crossed the floor to the Labour Party in 1928 and was appointed Secretary of State for India by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, a position he held until the Labour Party's landslide electoral defeat in 1931. He was kept in hospital for observation and was described as being in a "comfortable condition". Tony Benn, a passionate orator, prolific diarist and provocative icon of the British left who became the first peer to surrender an aristocratic title to remain in the House of Commons, died early on Friday at his home in west London, his family said. Tony Benn dies aged 88. "[109] In 1991, with Labour still in opposition and a general election due by June 1992, he proposed the Commonwealth of Britain Bill, abolishing the monarchy in favour of the United Kingdom becoming a "democratic, federal and secular commonwealth", a republic with a written constitution. [151][152] Benn also claimed in 2010 that Blair had lost the "trust of the nation" regarding the war in Iraq.[153]. [48] He became the "Baby" again in 1951, when Teevan was not re-elected. years ago, when he fought a long and successful battle to be the In June 2005, he was a panellist on a special edition of BBC One's Question Time edited entirely by a school-age film crew selected by a BBC competition. Would I have been a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Although Tony Benn came from a very privileged class background – his father, Viscount Stansgate, was a Labour peer – he became the standard bearer for the left and the militant working class in the 1970s and 1980s. The citizen is far less likely to be impacted by the decisions of dukes or bishops than by those of Nice or his local education authority. Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014) was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. [72], Upon the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Benn described Mao as "one of the greatest—if not the greatest—figures of the twentieth century: a schoolteacher who transformed China, released it from civil war and foreign attack and constructed a new society there" in his diaries, adding that "he certainly towers above any twentieth-century figure I can think of in his philosophical contribution and military genius". He was granted an emergency commission as a pilot officer (on probation) on 10 March 1945. [76] In response, Benn later recalled that: "I retorted that their policy was a siege economy, only they had the bankers inside the castle with all our supporters left outside, whereas my policy would have our supporters in the castle with the bankers outside. Why not laugh about it and allow it to bring us closer together? Callaghan allowed Benn to put forward the Alternative Economic Strategy, which consisted of a self-sufficient economy less dependent on low-rate fresh borrowing, but the AES, which according to opponents would have led to a "siege economy", was rejected by the Cabinet. [108], Benn later voted for the repeal of Section 28 during the first term of Tony Blair's New Labour Government, and voted in favour of equalising the age of consent. [145], Cameron also said in 2008 that, alongside George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Benn's Arguments for Democracy was "a very powerful book which makes the important point that we vest power in people who are elected, and that we can get rid of, rather than those we can't". Leader of the Opposition and Labour leader Ed Miliband, who knew Benn personally as a family friend, said: I think Tony Benn will be remembered as a champion of the powerless, as a conviction politician, as somebody of deep principle and integrity. He was elected for Bristol South East at the 1950 general election but inherited his father's peerage on his death, which prevented him from continuing to serve as an MP. In 1955 when Eisenhower said he was going for ‘Atoms for Peace’ I became a passionate supporter of it. In den 1970er und 1980er Jahren führte er den linken Parteiflügel und war bis zu seinem Tod im sozialistischen und pazifistischen … [182], In Bristol, where Benn first served as a member of parliament, a number of tributes exist in his honour. Aren't Iraqis terrified? unwavering principles; always open to new ideas; stellar political Don't Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die? Harold Best Death | Harold Best Obituary – Former MP for Leeds North WestHarold Best sadly passed away, Harold Best was known to be an amazing person he contributed passionately to his team and community. [106] He became a leading figure of the British opposition to the War in Afghanistan from 2001 and the Iraq War, and in February 2003 he travelled to Baghdad to meet Saddam Hussein. Due to the sheer scale of this comment community, we are not able to give each post the same level of attention, but we have preserved this area in the interests of open debate. In the 1976 edition, almost all details were omitted except his name, jobs as a Member of Parliament and as a Government Minister, and address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back the draft entry with everything else struck through. In a world of In 2012, Benn was awarded an honorary degree from Goldsmiths, University of London. And that is unacceptable. death. Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/03/tony-benn-dies-88 The death of Tony Benn after a long illness at the age of 88 marks the passing away of an outstanding leader of the British left. [128], He toured with a one-man stage show and appeared a few times each year in a two-man show with folk singer Roy Bailey. Labour MPs took to the social network to pay warm tributes. Two are in a room between the Central Lobby and Strangers' Gallery that holds a permanent display about the suffragettes. It would be easy to reverse the policies and replace the personalities—the process has begun—but the rotten values that have been propagated from the platform of political power in Britain during the past 10 years will be an infection—a virulent strain of right-wing capitalist thinking which it will take time to overcome. Tributes poured in for veteran Labour politician Tony Benn today after he died at home at the age of 88. [6] In 1945–46, William Benn was the Secretary of State for Air in the first majority Labour Government. peer, Benn first made his mark on national politics more than 60 That same year, details of Tony Benn’s own apparent tax avoidance scheme were first published. the causes he cared about, often unfashionable ones. These [four] lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. In a statement his children Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua ", "Tony Benn dies: his most memorable quotes", "Five lesser-spotted things Tony Benn gave the UK", "Wireless and Television (Pirate Stations)", "UK Confidential Transcripts: Tony Benn – The Labour Minister", "Simon Hoggart's week: the honour of being loathed", "Into The Archives: Tony Benn On The True Power Of Democracy", "Tony Benn (1925-2014): "I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn't believe in, "Ten things you may not have known about Tony Benn", "Tony Benn | Aristotle | guardian.co.uk Politics", "Scottish independence: Tony Benn: 'UK split would divide me with a knife, "Does Labour's Left Have an Alternative? [180][181], In 2011 Benn unveiled a plaque in Highbury, North London, to commemorate the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The Jetzt eBook herunterladen & bequem mit Ihrem Tablet oder eBook Reader lesen. As leader of the National Executive Committee from 1971 to 1972 while in opposition David Cameron of! 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