Tony Benn and the Idea of Participation - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the fifth of six lectures on post-war politicians who have made the weather and the phrase making the weather come from Winston Churchill who used it about Joseph Chamberlain colonial secretary at the beginning of the 20th century because Churchill believed that Chamberlain although he never became Prime Minister made the weather in the sense that he set the agenda for the politics of his day and these six lectures were about six post-war politicians who made the weather who helped set the agenda of politics perhaps even more than those who became Prime Minister the first was on an hour in Bevin who was creator of the National Health Service and a prophet of democratic socialism the second was on Ian MacLeod and the rapid decolonization of Africa the third on Roy Jenkins whose legislation helped create what some called the permissive society and other the liberal society who played an important role in the European Union and was the prophet of realignment on the left and the fourth was on Enoch Powell who emphasized the sovereignty of Parliament both in relation to devolution and in relation to Europe these last two lectures are on Tony Benn and Sir Keith Joseph and Tony Benn about whom I'm talking today is the only one of the six who is still alive and he is like nigh Bevin a prophet of democratic socialism but his greatest achievements lie in my view in the field of constitutional reform so Keith Joseph who's the subject of my next and last lecture laid down much of the ideological framework for what became known as Thatcherism and some would regard him as the John the Baptist of Thatcherism now in fact both Tony Benn and Keith Joseph are key figures of the Thatcherite era Keith Joseph was one of the most powerful supporters of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn one of her strongest opponents though always I should say as you will see in a moment a very courteous opponent so perhaps these last two lectures are appropriately timed as we are all attempting to come to terms with the political legacy of Margaret Thatcher now Ben and Joseph were opposite poles of the political spectrum but they have more in common than might appear at first sight and in particular this that both of them rejected the post-war settlement the settlement established by the a key government and continued by the conservative governments of the 1950s in 1981 Keith Joseph met Ben on a train and they agreed the last 35 years had in fact been a disaster for very different reasons Keith Joseph because the Atlas settlement was too statist it had undermined the free market and in his view undermined individual responsibility tony benn for opposite reasons because it had kept the machinery of capitalism intact and had not turned Britain into a socialist country both Ben and Joseph and in this they've got something in common with Enoch Powell our remarkable more for what they said and thought than for what they achieved in office I think it's remarkable that of the six people about whom I'm talking Roy Jenkins was the only one to hold a great office of state that is a chancellorship the Foreign Office or the Home Office now Enoch Powell is hardly in government at all he was in the cabinet for only 15 months so much smaller peer than most people imagine Ben and Joseph were in office for a long time Keith Joseph served the cabinet's of four conservative prime ministers Harold Macmillan Alec douglas-home addled Heath and Margaret Thatcher Tony Benn served throughout the Labour government's of the 1960s and 70s from 1964 to 70 in the first Wilson government then from 1974 to 76 in the second Wilson government and from 1976 to 79 in the Callaghan government but Joseph achieved little in legislative terms while Ben's main achievements in the fuel of constitutional reform came from his role in opposition as a campaigner not from his work in government but first let us hear Tony been talking about what he regards the mistakes of Thatcherism as a philosophy is this in the House of Commons in the early 1990s shortly after Margaret Thatcher left office the second thing is despite the fact we've been told we're an entrepreneurial Society this is a country today that has an utter contempt for skill you talk to people who did coal ran train doctors nurses dentists tool makers nobody in Britain is interested in them the whole of the so-called entrepreneurial Society has focused on the Sydney news we get in every bulletin telling us what's happened to the pound sterling two three points of decimals against a basket of European currency skill is what built this country strength and it is treated with contempt I must confess the auctioning off of public assets particularly the latest disgusting Frankenstein advertisements who told me more about the mentality of the minister who devised the scheme than it did about the sale itself these are assets built up by the labor of those who work in electricity and by the taxpayer who put the equipment in now to be auctioned off at half their price to make a profit for a tax cut for the rich before the next election come if these were local councilors they would be before the courts for wilful misconduct and because they are ministers and then some of them later go on the boards of the companies they've privatized they are treated as businessmen who know better how to handle it as members of the Board of Directors than allegedly they did as ministers responsible local government has been crippled across the river is the London County Council County Hall the set seat of government of the greatest city in the world empty to the soul because the government wanted to local government and so indeed they have the poll tax the centralization of the business rate the punishment of the Liverpool and Lambeth counsellors was to take all power from local government and put it in the hands of a government that craved it did it believe in the role of the state the undermining of the trade unions with less rights in Britain than they have in Eastern Europe the tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor the censorship of the media the abuse by the security services the restriction of civil liberties and when we look back on the 1980s we will see many victims of market forces I do not share the general feel that market forces are the basis of political Liberty every time I see a person in a cardboard box in London I say that person is a victim of market forces every time I see a pensioner can't manage a victim of market forces the sick who are waiting for medical treatment that they could accelerate by private insurance they are the victims of market forces and with the disappearance of the prime minister who was a great idea law I mean her strength was that she understood a certain view of life and when she goes and she's gone there will be a great ideological vacuum and so but saying we will run market forces better than treated because her whole philosophy was that you measured the price of everything and the value of nothing and we have to replace that and I had one experience the other day which confirmed me in my view that she hasn't really changed the thinking or culture of the British people I don't know how many people travel as I do on trains but I go regularly on the trains and I see all the looking business made with their calculators working out their cash flow frowning people looking and glaring at each other that's alright trains the Train of the competitive society becoming veteran chose to go the other day the train broke down and on the holy change somebody came in he said they have a cup of tea from my thermos and then people look to after each other's children and the young couple cook to me and I said after about half how long have been married oh we met on the train listening and a woman said will you get off at Darby and bring my son in Swansea because he'd be worried by the time we got to London we were a social astray because you can't change human nature there is good and bad in everybody and for 10 years it is the ballet and the good that has been denounced as lunatic out of touch cloud cuckoo-land extremists and militant and that's what the party opposite have done they don't quite yet know they think it's the retirement of a popular headmistress under circumstances some might regret actually they've killed the source of their own philosophy and opened the way for quite different ideas haha when you can see why he was called citizen Ben but I hope you noticed his very cultivated voice because in fact Tony Benn was born into the heart of the aristocracy of the Labour Party his father was a labor cabinet minister who became a Labour hereditary peer and Tony Benn was fond of saying that the normal path of Labour MPs was to begin on the left and end up in the House of Lords he said he did it the other way around because he succeeded in theory to his father's peerage but didn't renounced it and then moved to the left so his path was the opposite he was born as Antony Wedgwood been in April 1925 into a highly political family his father and both of his grandfather's had been Liberal MPs his father was William Wedgwood Ben who was the youngest MP elected in nineteen six the er of the great liberal landslide and when his father married in 1920 Asquith the former prime minister and liberal leader was one of the witnesses the only condition that Ben's father imposed on his wife was that she should abstain from drink because Ben's father was a lifelong teetotaler their honeymoon they were very political their honeymoon was spent in Geneva attending the inaugural meeting of the League of Nations Ben's mother Margaret was interested in theology and began began as an Anglican but was rebuked by the Archbishop of Canterbury for advocating the ordination of women and in consequence she left the Anglican Church and joined her husband's church the congregation list and became a founder president of the congregational foundation now in 1927 Ben's father left the Liberals and joined the Labour Party but characteristically he resigned his seat and sought nomination for a Labour constituency and returns a Labour MP in 1928 and in the second minority Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald he was made a cabinet minister as Secretary of State for India and it was through that that the young Ben's as a young boy met Gandhi the Tony Benn was born in the corridors of power the family lived in Westminster next door to Sidney and Beatrice Webb two early socialists and Ben attended Westminster public school he was politically conscious from a very early age when he was seventeen he walked into Labour Party headquarters in transport house and joined the Labour Party but he said he had an experience earlier than that which marked him for life he said when he was five years old he was dandled on the knee of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and he says he's never trusted a Labour leader since and indeed he managed to clash with every single Labour leader during his time in Parliament except for at Lee he clashed with Hugh gates kill with Harold Wilson with James Callaghan Michael foot Neil Kinnock John Smith and Tony Blair now in 1942 Ben's father was made appear and so as to improve labour representation in the upper house and in those days being a peer mentor editor appear life Pitt pages were not possible until a life peerage Act of 1958 so being a hereditary peer meant ones eldest son would go to the Lord's and therefore not be able to pursue a political career now at the time this did not seem to matter because Antony Wedgwood Ben was the second son of his father and the older brother Michael intended to enter the church and said he had no objection to his father taking the peerage and his father took the title Lord Stan's gate and he became the Secretary of State for air in at Lee's post war government meanwhile Tony Benn went to Oxford in 1941 but in 1943 at the age of 18 he joined the RAF and learnt to fly he was sometimes regard as a pacifist but he never was he serves as a pilot in South Africa and Rhodesia and he said that was a great education for him because he saw it firsthand how the native population was treated and he became a supporter of rapid colonial independence he said in his own words the treatment of the blacks was appalling in Africa was my introduction to the real world after having had such a limited education I learnt an enormous amount which I couldn't have learnt if the war hadn't occurred he said Africa was my comprehensive school his father remarkably was already serving in the Air Force he joined the Air Force in 1940 at the age of 63 working in the Air Ministry and then at the age of 67 he flew as an air gunner and was mentioned in dispatches his older brother Michael was also in the RAF and was a night fighter pilot who won the DFC for action in North Africa in Europe but tragically he was killed in an air accident not on service but in an accident in 1944 at the age of 22 and this is of course a tragic family event but it had great political consequences because it meant that Anthony himself was now in line for the peerage it meant the end of his political career in theory but meanwhile he went back to Oxford where he became president the Union he later removed the details of his education from Who's Who in 1977 shortly after adopting the style Tony Benn to replace Antony Wedgwood been and education instead of Westminster and New College Oxford he replaced it with education still in progress he married in 1949 he'd met his wife the earth previously she was an American student who'd come to Oxford her summer course and in Ben's own words we met in August 1948 and as I was shy I didn't ask her to marry me for 11 days that I proposed on a bench in Oxford I bought the bench and it sat in our front and garden all her life she died some years ago he said it's now beside her grave they have four children and were a highly political family and Ben's oldest daughter was a student at the LSE in the 1970s and organized a demonstration against him for not doing household chores she stood in Holland Park Avenue where Ben lived handing out leaflets end sexism in the Ben household calling for more equal distribution of household work Ben organized a counter demonstration one of Ben's sons Hilary Ben sits as MP for Leeds central and became a cabinet minister under brown shadow minister under Miliband and Hilary Ben says he's a Ben but not a Bennett Ben's granddaughter one of his granddaughter Emily stood for labour in 2010 for a hopeless seat in Worthing at the age of 18 she was by far the youngest candidate in the election campaign Ben's grandchildren's idea of fan apparently was to hold a mock press conference there are therefore five generations of Ben's in politics as you can see now after leaving Oxford and getting married Ben got into the House of Commons in 1950 as a result of by-election in Bristol South East a Labour seat he managed to defeat for the nomination an ex cabinet minister and a former MP and he was the baby of the house he was a 25 and his father said that his owner father had become an MP at the age of 42 he had become an MP at the age of 28 now that Anthony had been chosen at the age of 25 so the family seems to be getting more precocious from generation to generation when he entered Parliament Ben was not particularly left-wing indeed in the battle between hue Gaitskell and an iron Bevin over health charges Ben took gait skills side he said it was a question of priorities and one shouldn't be dogmatic about charges in the health service he wasn't associated with any faction of the Labour Party in the 1950s and indeed he voted for Gaitskell rather than Bevin as leader in 1955 he rose steadily in the Labour Party hierarchy and BK was put on the opposition front bench in 1957 but he resigned quietly 958 since he said he could not accept a defense policy based on the use of nuclear weapons but he was he didn't associate himself with the left particularly he became very interested in technology and was one of the first to recognize the importance of television and in 1959 he was chosen to chair Labour's party election broadcasts and I'll show the first minutes of one of them it'll look rather old-fashioned to you now but in 1959 it did seem quite a change from the traditional rather staid format so if we can ask the IT people you can see of the first minute of the 1959 labour election broadcast with a very young and enthusiastic Tony Benn good evening the big news tonight of course is from Washington and Moscow and later on Nye Bevin will be talking about it then which will be going over to Newcastle to join Hugh gates cool but first the pension scheme this is caught the imagination of people all over the Tories don't like it Woodrow what questions did cross well dick Crossman said about Ben his enthusiasm is for me the reverse of infectious after the election which labour lost at the age of 34 Ben was made shadow Transport Minister indeed he was the youngest Shadow Minister at the age of 34 and he argued for many things which related to come about compulsory seatbelts harsher penalties for drunken drivers and MOT tests but he gradually turned against the leader of his party Hugh Gaitskell who he thought was splitting it unnecessarily he sought a compromise on the issue of nuclear weapons and when that wasn't accepted he again resigned that was a brave thing to do as he would need Gaitskell support for the fight to renounce his peerage he later said it was a mistake to resign it was impulsive and it had no effect and he learned his lesson he never resigned again even when the Labour cabinets of the 1960s and 70s moved in directions that were very distasteful to him he voted for Harold Wilson in the leadership election of November 1960 which Wilson lost to gate skill and he his name was not supported by gates kill for elections to Labour Shadow Cabinet and a list of the names was published in The Times and there were asterisks with the names of the candidates who were supported by Gaitskell there was no asterisk behind Ben's name and Ben's father rang him from the House of Lords to say I'm very glad to see there isn't an asterisk against your name I'm so pleased you are not unapproved candidate and these were the last words that Ben's father addressed to him shortly afterwards at the age of 83 he had a heart attack and died and this made Ben autumn ethically appear the day after the his father died he received a letter with his National Insurance cards from the House of Commons addressed to Lord Stan's gate and he was not allowed into the House of Commons he called on the speaker who said to him I have made an order my lord that you are to be kept out of the chamber the press called him the reluctant peer Ben said that was wrong he took some blood and some blood out in a vial and said he didn't have blue blood at all and that he wasn't a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner and he said he was going to fight the automatic accession of the peerage and fight for the right to renounce in that he and that he had support from Winston Churchill who wrote him a letter saying that he was personally strongly in favor of sons having the right to renounce irrevocably the peerage they inherit from their fathers and been said the issue was the right of the constituency to choose whoever they wanted to represent them and so he resigned his seat and fought a by-election in March 1961 in Bristol which he won with 70% of the vote but he was still not entitled to sit in the Commons and a select committee was set up to consider this issue and the Select Committee came to conclusion that no change could be made because they said Mr Justice Doddridge in 1626 had said that the peerage was a personal dignity annexed to the posterity and fixed in the blood and the Select Committee asked the question had rajala by God the legal right to make a valid surrender of the earldom of Norfolk in 1300 and to and then said that sort of thing wouldn't go down very well in Bristol he then called on the clerks in the House of Lords to discuss what procedures he could adopt and he said they were very insulted that anybody didn't want to be appear he said if I had arrived with a string around my trousers and a choker scarf and said I was a dustman but thought I had a strong claim to be the Earl of Dundee I think they would have treated me with more respect um as I say he was reelected with 70% of the vote and Churchill sent him five pounds towards his election expenses but he was still not allowed to enter the House of Commons and his opponent a conservative took the seat though it only won 30 percent of the vote no liberal had stood and his opponent was declared elected by an election court ironically as opponent was himself the heir to a peerage held by his cousin and then said the situation we most easily resolved if he murdered his opponents cousin but then persisted endlessly and in the end he won and in 1963 a peerage Act was passed allowing piers to renounce and immediately Act was passed been raced down the corridors to be the first to sign the newly created register of renunciation oddly enough only 15 others did the same in the first 20 years of this legislation and at that point Ben's conservative opponents sportingly resigned and Ben won his by-election in August 1963 incidentally as a matter of curiosity the title is not abolished only the requirement to sit in the Lord's so Ben's eldest son Stephen will become Lord Stan's gate when Ben dies though he'll presumably renounce his title but the peerage fight had a very powerful effect on Ben's thinking in my view and he said you're the most important thing with the establishment was to show tenacity he said the establishment could be worn down if you didn't give up he had at first when you made a proposal they would say you were completely mad you were off your head they didn't take you seriously they they would say you were simply wrong it was absurd and no one could support what you were doing then they said well p'raps you're right but now isn't the right time and then afterwards they said well of course everyone was in favor of it all the time really and the same happened with his two other victorious constitutional campaigns the campaign for the referendum in the 1970s and the campaign that Labour Party members should be allowed to elect the leader in the 1980s and no one I think now disputes that they are all sensible reforms there's another similarity or the sad similarity that all these reforms Bennett of benefited other people and not been because a renunciation of the peerage enabled Lord Hume to renounce his peerage the same year 1963 and become Prime Minister when Harold Macmillan resigned so it got the Conservative Party out of the difficulty and helped the conservatism but been sometimes protested about that that the Act had been really just personally for him because it wasn't for him it was for other people as well now in 1964 the year after pronunciation Labour won the election and Ben became Postmaster General the youngest minister at the age of 39 and then two years later in the cabinet in 1966 as Minister of Technology did while he was Minister of Technology he came to the conclusion that if we were to control modern technology we needed new democratic machinery he said we are trying to control 20th century society with democratic tools which were fashioned in the 19th century and he said we needed to do that by finding new instruments of democracy now 1968 was the year of the student revolt and the years of revolts against elected leaders and non elected leaders in many parts of the world the revolt in Czechoslovakia which led to Soviet intervention a student revolt in France which almost led to the end of the gauls regime and a student revolt in America we persuaded President Johnson that he couldn't stand again because of the serious protests all of the time and Ben was one of the first to notice the significance of these reserved revolts and at an important speech in May 1968 he said that much of the discontent was a protest against traditional political institutions he said many people do not think it is responding quickly enough to the mounting pressure of events or the individual or collective aspirations of our community it would be foolish to assume that people will be satisfied for much longer with a system which confined their national political role to the marking of a ballot paper with a single cross once every 5 years people want a much greater say that certainly explains some of the student protests against the authoritarian hierarchies in some of our universities and their sense of isolation from the problems of real life much of the industrial unrest especially in unofficial strikes stems from worker resentment and their sense of exclusion from the decision-making process whether by their employers or sometimes by their union leaders and participation was to be a key theme for the rest of his career to be secured firstly by Freedom of Information legislation so that people would understand the basis of decisions being made secondly by the referendum and he said that technology now made electronic referendums possible thirdly by decentralization fourthly by industrial democracy and worker control because he said the power of the trade unions at present was a purely negative power the power to go on strike and dislocate the system it should be convert into a positive power and fifthly by encouraging the growth of pressure groups to represent the excluded in particular ethnic minorities tenants consumers and so on he said beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it individuals Adam the right to renegotiate the social contract on a personal basis and are thus providing a completely new dimension and meaning to the phrase government by consent now in 1970 the Labour Party was defeated in the election and been moved into opposition he was one of the few ministers if not the only one who left office more socialist and when he joined it he's moved to the left after the 1970 defeat and even more after the defeat in 1979 with attributed by his enemies to opportunism but it can be argued that resulted from his analysis of the causes not only of Labour's defeat but of its failure to satisfied supporters in office and of course he was following in the footsteps of his father who also moved to the left during his bitter career indeed been said that his family had a very unusual gene which instead of making them more conservative as they aged made them more radical he proposed in 1971 that there should be a referendum before Britain entered the Common Market as the European Union was then called and the first time he proposed it on Labour's National Executive he couldn't even find a seconder but James Callaghan rather presently said Tony may be launching a little rubber life raft which we will all be glad of in a year's time and what Callaghan meant was the referendum would paper over the cracks in the Labour Party between those who wanted Britain to join or stay in and those who wanted Britain to leave the European community the same concept that Cameron is adopting with his proposal for a referendum eight papers over the cracks in the Conservative Party eventually again through persistence Ben got his way and labour committed itself to a referendum and Ben was appointed industry secretary in the second Wilson government in 1974 and a referendum was agreed together with a constitutional innovation which allowed the minority of Ministers who were opposed to entry into the community who thought Britain should leave to express their own views on that against government policy but only outside parliament and this put Ben in some difficulty when he was asked questions as industry secretary but he dealt with these difficulties in a characteristically humorous way he was asked the question would the steel industry get more or less cash under European Community rules and then said I have nothing to add to the speech made in other parts of the country by my right honourable friend the member for Bristol South East it took a moment for people to get the joke now Ben himself was moving against Europe because of a worry about the loss of sovereignty it wasn't the worry of the right wing of loss of sovereignty it was a left wing worried that Europe would prevent Britain moving along the road to socialism he said that required a siege economy what he called the alternative economic strategy with import controls restrictions on the export of capital and a policy of national planning and that was the main alternative policy to that adopted by the Labour leadership in the 1970s now when Harold Wilson resigned in 1976 Ben stood for the leadership and came a respectable fourth with 37 votes and switched his vote then to Michael foot who was however defeated by Callan and many thought at that time that Ben would be a future leader of the Labour Party and Callaghan said rather unkindly to Ben I can see you as leader of the Labour Party in opposition and ten years in opposition you will be in fact lady wasn't lead of the opposition and labour was 18 years in opposition in 1979 the government's defeated and been handed in the seals of office and the Queen made a comment to him of the kind of pattern she usually made saying that the predecessors of resigning Minister just come in and said what a strain it was and there was some relief to be relieved from the strains of office and Ben said told her worth 25 years ago we were Empire now we are a colony with the IMF running our financial affairs the Common Market Commission running our legislation and NATO running our Armed Forces he says the Queen quickly changed the subject he decided not to stand for the shadow cabinet in opposition but to try and reform the Labour Party to make it more accessible to its members and what he wanted were three reforms two of which he secured the first was automatic re selection of MPs compulsory Rhys election of Labour MPs so that they remained accountable to their constituency parties and their membership and they couldn't do what in his view that had been doing following policies in opposition to the wishes of their constituency members that was agreed by the Labour Party in 1979 secondly he wanted the leader to be elected not just by the MPs but by the organisation's outside parliament the constituency labour parties and the trade unions that was defeated in 1979 but gains were victory in 1980 the third thing he wanted was that the manifesto lai Party manifesto should not be written by the cabinet or shadow cabinet but by the National Executive of the party representing the extra parliamentary party that was not accepted he also committed the labour party in 1980 to widespread and radical reforms the removal of all American nuclear bases from Britain withdraw from Europe without a referendum widespread nationalization and if there was resistance from the House of Lords abolishing it by creating a thousand peers now the mandatory compulsory selection of MPs annoyed as you can imagine some of his parliamentary colleagues and was partly responsible for the growth of a breakaway part of the Social Democrat Party the SDP led by Roy Jenkins and other my subjects which 27 Labour MPs eventually joined now in 1980 Michael foot replaced Callahan as Labour leader Ben did not stand that was the last election held under the old rules in which just the MPs voted Ben did not stand himself but decided in 1981 that he would stand for the deputy leadership and he was very narrowly defeated for the deputy leadership by Denis Healey by a whisker and Healy got under 51% of the vote and been over 49% of the vote but most of Ben's support came from outside parliament from the constituency labour parties and from the trade unions most of Healy's support came from MPs it was a narrow defeat and it was generally attributed to a defection at the last moment by the so-called soft left led by Neil Kinnock who'd previously been supporter of Ben but who thought that a combination of Michael thought and Tony been leading labour party would condemn it to oblivion and indeed that it would fall behind the SDP liberal alliance as in fact it almost did because the 1983 election was disaster for labor labor 1 just 27% the worst performance it ever had as a mass party the election of 2010 when labour got 29% was its second worst performance in the mass party that 27% was just 2% ahead of the vote of the Liberal SDP alliance and it may well be that Healy's elections saved the labour party that they would have come third if it hadn't been for that and both thought and Ben took the view from that election quite right I think that the problem was the Labour Party had been talking to itself about problems of interests in itself the constitutional structure of the Labour Party rather than to the British public and then said later that the trouble with the 1981 deputy leadership campaign was that it was directed members of the party where the should have been directed the public but it was a bit late to say that after all the parliamentary Labour Party was electoral aren't able to the voters as well as to the party conference and of the party members now as I say Ben was defeated by a whisker in 1981 but that proved to be the high point for the left and after that it was downhill all the way there was a slow and steady right-wing recovery until under new labor policies very different from those been advocated labour finally won an election in 1997 but already by the mid-80s Ben was complaining that all his supporters had deserted him for Killick and he said I am now alone with Denis Skinner and the headbangers in 1988 been contested the leadership of the Labour Party again against Neil Kinnock and won just 11 percent of the vote against clinics 89 percent this was ironic the his an only attempt at the leadership under the new rules that he himself had supported and he gained a pathetic share of the vote the beneficiary of all that was Kinnick later John Smith and later Tony Blair or all of whom been strongly opposed Ben took his defeat philosophically he said I dare say that the general secretary of the scribes and Pharisees announced in Jerusalem in AD 32 what's the point of following a leader who gets crucified he said that may have been the birth of the new realism for all I knew he opposed all the Wars of the 1980s and 90s though not a pacifist he was opposed to the Falklands War he was opposed to the Gulf War indeed he met Saddam Hussein to try and get agreement on withdraw from Kuwait which he failed to do he opposed a second Iraq war indeed he was president of the stop the war coalition but his day was now over and he was overcome by new labor and perhaps the final humiliation came in 1995 when Tony Blair removed Clause 4 from the Labour Party Constitution in 2001 Tony been left Parliament for the reasons he put it to devote more time to politics and in 2003 at the age of 78 in that year he held 142 political meetings gave 235 radio broadcasts and 150 television appearances the Speaker of the Commons gave him freedom to use the Commons library the tea rooms and sit in the peers gallery to listen to debates without the humiliation has been put it of being a lord he published 8 volumes of Diaries just 10% of the total he'd he'd kept a diary almost almost the whole peered from 1950 and that 8 volumes published but there 10% of the total total 15 million words 1.5 million published in 2005 he collapsed as a lame party conference after addressing 5 Fringe meetings in a day when he was 80 he was put in an oxygen mask and his son Hillary in the labrum he came to see him and when the mask was taken off Tony Benn he said to Hillary now about your speech in conference in BBC Two's daily politics in January 2007 he was declared Britain's political hero by 38% in the rather unscientific poll 38% compared with 35% for Margaret Thatcher in July 2009 he had a pacemaker fitted and he made the final entry in his diary he said the battery lasts 10 years so I think it will see me out he received an unexpected in comum when in September 2009 in an interview with me at that Woodstock literary festival David Cameron said that Ben's arguments for democracy was one of the books that had most influenced him and unexpected in comum but he just received another in comu in September 2008 when he said he received a death threat he said I was very chuffed as I have not had one for years he said once I was called the most dangerous man in Britain now I'm told I'm a national treasure he said that's the final corruption in life you become a kindly harmless old gentleman he sign kindly I am old and I can be a gentleman but I'm not harmless now in conventional terms Ben was unsuccessful he was in the cabinet for nine years but has no really major legislation to his name the worker cooperatives he supported all failed the industry bill which involved greater intervention in British industry in the 1970s also failed and was repealed and repudiated by Margaret Thatcher his alternative economic strategy was not tried his great opponent Denis Healey said his one achievement was the Concorde supersonic airliner which is also now come to an end his only memorial as Healy said an aircraft which is used by wealthy people on their expense accounts whose fares are subsidised by much poorer tax payers he failed twice to become leader the Labour Party and failed to become deputy leader the ideas associated with Ben seemed have been totally superseded by Tony Blair and New Labour difficult to imagine the policies he supported of nationalization the gala terrorism unilateral disarmament all those policies difficult to believe they'll ever again form part of the Labor Party's platform but where he succeeded was in his constitutional reforms and he said the key questions to ask of anyone with power so there were five questions you ought to ask first what power have you got second where did you get it from thirdly in whose interest do you exercise it fourthly to whom are you accountable and fifthly how can we get rid of you and the key theme of his political career is that challenge to non elected Authority whether in the labour party leadership or amongst the MPs or in the House of Lords or in what he saw as international capital in the IMF and perhaps most of all in the European Union and many people would share his view about the lack of accountability of European leaders there was a strong constitutional reformer the one constitution reform he was strongly against was proportional representation and he once said an ilk in it the reason for that is that if we had a list system of proportional representation I would be number 599 out of 600 on your Labor Party list and Neil Kinnock replied do you want that in writing so the primacy of elected authority was what was important to Ben as in three major reforms all helped others the peerage Act it into the Conservatives and Alec douglas-home the referendum gave the pro marketeers their greatest victory ever a two-to-one majority in the 1975 referendum the Labour Party reforms benefited Neil Kinnock John Smith and Tony Blair but all of these reforms are now accepted by everyone whether they're on the left or not there's no one who now suggests that hereditary peer shouldn't be allowed to announce his peerage the very idea seems absurd and I think people here would agree with Ben and say well we've always in favour that all along no one now disputes the need I think for referendums on major constitutional issues and I think most people favor one on the European Union as David Cameron has proposed and the referendum has had a great impact on British life it's possible that we would be in the Euro if it wasn't for the referendum because Tony Blair wanted to bring us in but no opinion poll since 1997 has ever shown a majority for joining the euro so it's possibly due to the referendum that we haven't joined the Euro without the referendum we might have adopt a different electoral system because the coalition agreed to the alternative vote if accepted by referendum rejected by referendum so the referendum pact on British life now no one I think believes that only MPs should select the party leader the other parties have adopted the reforms of the Labour Party the liberal and conservative parties also elect their leader through their party members as well as MPs and either liberals were first in the field it's fair to say in 1976 when David Steele was elected leader but the Conservatives having opposed been very strongly they also now elect their leader through the machinery of their members as well as pom that's all accepted from this point of view Ben is a living presence and I think will remain so for many years to come but over and above that Ben believed that the real function of a political leader was to be a teacher he once said that he produced a motion in Parliament that in one fell swoop would repeal all Margaret Thatcher's legend of measures be a repeal of every every single act of Parliament been passed between 1979 and 1990 but he said even if that succeeded even got through a pardon which of course it wouldn't he said it wouldn't make any difference but he said Margaret Thatcher's great achievement was not as a legislator or a manager but as a teacher though he disagreed with lessons she taught he taught and he said the problem with left is it hasn't had a teacher since the days of the najran Bevan he said it was better in politics to be a signpost than a weathercock and he said Margaret Thatcher was a signpost didn't agree with the direction she was going in but it was the better role to have and he wanted to be a teacher of left now did he succeed himself in being a teacher of a left or did he on the contrary prevent the left facing the changed conditions of the last part of the 20th century did the left need to overcome his legacy in order to win power which is what Tony Blair would have said and what Neil Kinnock would have said or in the light of the financial crisis of 2007 the problem with the market system the problems if you like with capitalism will the left return to his ideas in other words was Tony Benn a prophet of the future or was he a throwback to an unusable past well that the ladies and gentlemen I leave to you thank

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 130,945

Keywords: Politics, Labour, Thatcher, Thatcherism, Left wing, Peerage

Id: zQ4n8jMGDw8

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2013