RIP: Anthony Benn
Mar. 16th, 2014 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseHe was one of the first people I recognized in British politics, along with Harold Wilson. Someone gave my father a copy of "The Bedside Cabinet Book" when we first moved to London in 1967. That book, which was pictures with silly captions, was one of my first introductions to British politics.
Mr. Benn, and he was MISTER, having renounced the title Viscount Stansted in order to serve in the Commons, was probably the most left wing of all the prominent Labour leaders. The ones who came up through the trade union movement understood compromise better -- understood constituents who might be conservative in small ways, social ways -- Benn was the pure Socialist who approached through ideology.
Even when I agreed with him (I'm left of center on the British scale, which makes me a raging commie on the American scale and firmly to the right of Tony Benn), I often found him didactic and off-putting.
And yet, I also felt Labour lost something when they relegated him to the back benches after Michael Foote's firm 1983 defeat. He was never namby-pamby. He kept talking when everyone else, even on his own side, told him to sit down and shut up. I respected him. He made me define my own values.
So, I leave you with his ten best quotes according to readers of the Guardian.
His son has acceded to the title on his death. I find myself oddly disappointed by that.
Mr. Benn, and he was MISTER, having renounced the title Viscount Stansted in order to serve in the Commons, was probably the most left wing of all the prominent Labour leaders. The ones who came up through the trade union movement understood compromise better -- understood constituents who might be conservative in small ways, social ways -- Benn was the pure Socialist who approached through ideology.
Even when I agreed with him (I'm left of center on the British scale, which makes me a raging commie on the American scale and firmly to the right of Tony Benn), I often found him didactic and off-putting.
And yet, I also felt Labour lost something when they relegated him to the back benches after Michael Foote's firm 1983 defeat. He was never namby-pamby. He kept talking when everyone else, even on his own side, told him to sit down and shut up. I respected him. He made me define my own values.
So, I leave you with his ten best quotes according to readers of the Guardian.
His son has acceded to the title on his death. I find myself oddly disappointed by that.
