As a young socialist in Brooklyn and Long Island, I looked around for role models and heroes. The Democratic Party weren't offering but across the Atlantic, England had Tony Benn. He died today, age 88, at his home in London. Born into the aristocracy, Benn-- formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate-- renounced his titles, the first peer to ever do so, and served in the House of Commons for 50 years and was a Cabinet Minister under two Labor Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. He was the leader of the left wing faction of the Labor Party and eventually lost out to the conservative wing of the Labor Party-- think New Dems.
When I was a young man, Benn, a cabinet minister, was becoming radicalized. In his book, Out of the Wilderness, he explained that he had learned 4 lessons that pushed him further left. All 4 apply to our own politics as well as to the UK's.
• how "the Civil Service can frustrate the policies and decisions of popularly elected governments"Sound familiar? Later Benn, at one time the most popular political leader in Britain-- among regular people, not the elites-- "came to be regarded as an anti-establishment voice for democracy," according to The Guardian's announcement of his death today.
• how the centralized nature of the Labour Party allowed to the Leader to run "the Party almost as if it were his personal kingdom"
• how "the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government"
• how the power of the media, which "like the power of the medieval Church, ensures that events of the day are always presented from the point of the view of those who enjoy economic privilege."
After a successful cabinet career under Wilson in the 70s, he swung to the left politically and challenged Denis Healey for the Labour deputy leadership-- only losing by the narrowest of margins after one of the key unions switched sides at the last minute.He campaigned to abolish the British monarchy, nationalize the big banks and to rid Britain of nuclear weapons. I counted myself a Bennite and was disgusted with how Tony Blair turned the Labor Party into a Conservative-lite operation, selling out the working class from which it sprung. Benn didn't have much use for him either. "New Labour’s prime object is to destroy old Labour. But you can’t just wish away a movement, a history, with a soundbite. You just can’t do it."
He then became instrumental in using Labour party machinery to develop a leftwing manifesto on which Michael Foot fought the 1983 election.
He was also central to the campaign to make Labour MPs more accountable to their constituencies through automatic re-selection, a reform hated by many Labour MPs at the time but now regarded as wholly uncontroversial.
After Foot's defeat and the emergence of Neil Kinnock as party leader in 1983, the party shifted to the centre, and Benn began to lose his direct political influence over the party. He was heavily defeated when he stood against Kinnock for the party leadership in 1988 and left parliament in 2001, after the first term of the Blair government, to "spend more time on politics."
…He became known for his campaign against the invasion of Iraq, addressing the UK's biggest ever demonstration during the Stop the War rally of 2003.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said: "The death of Tony Benn represents the loss of an iconic figure of our age. He will be remembered as a champion of the powerless, a great parliamentarian and a conviction politician.
"Tony Benn spoke his mind and spoke up for his values. Whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him, everyone knew where he stood and what he stood for.
"For someone of such strong views, often at odds with his party, he won respect from across the political spectrum.
"This was because of his unshakeable beliefs and his abiding determination that power and the powerful should be held to account."
Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor began a paean to Benn this morning with a quote: "I'm harmless now."
That's how Tony Benn summed up his own transformation from the man many in the Labour Party blamed for making them unelectable to the nation's political grandfather-- whose stories and speeches mesmerised those who listened to him even when they scarcely agreed with a word he said.
Tony Benn joked that unlike many radicals he'd become more left wing as he'd grown older. Harold Wilson quipped that Benn had "immatured with age."
He began his political career as the slick, presentable TV face of Labour in the 1960s but ended it by campaigning against pretty much all that New Labour stood for.
...He had become disillusioned with Labour's failure to change society complaining later that it had, instead, changes people to make them accept society as it was.
…Tony Blair's New Labour was, in essence, a complete repudiation of Benn-ery. It led Tony Benn out of parliament and onto the streets to campaign for socialism. As he was seen less on our TV screens he was seen more at protests, rallies and campaign meetings.
To many he was a voice of inspiration, with his warnings against globalisation, corporate power and American adventurism.
His ability to draw deeply from British history-- whether the Levellers or the suffragettes-- and to range widely-- from the global politics of the Arab street to that of your local estate-- made him a far bigger figure than the adviser turned politician PR-schooled technocrats who followed him.
