Like the prophets, in whom he was immersed in his childhood by his deeply moral and Christian mother, Tony Benn was misunderstood, feared and rejected by his own generation who perceived him as threatening their cosy consensus. Like the prophets he asked questions and raised complaints which they preferred not to hear, and when he […]
Posts Tagged ‘Tony Benn’
Tony Benn – a personal reminiscence
Mar 15th, 2014 by Jon Trickett.Tony Benn lived a long life and was a man bon into a highly political background. He met Gandhi and Lloyd George as a young man. He inherited a peerage when his father died, but rather than taking a privileged seat in the House of Lords, he fought a successful campaign to renounce his title so […]
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Obituary: Tony Benn – educator, radical, champion of democracy
Mar 14th, 2014 by Leo Panitch.There are two things you need to know about Tony Benn. The first is that he always saw his primary role, as a politician, as that of an educator who was engaged in developing popular democratic ambitions and capacities. The second is that, again unlike most politicians, he actually took democracy seriously in terms of […]
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Tony Benn – the spin doctor
Mar 14th, 2014 by Newsdesk.Tony Benn has been described as the Peter Mandelson of the 1950s. That is probably going too far, but a spin doctor he was, keen to enable the Labour Party to make the best possible use of the modern communications technology – the TV. This is a party political broadcast from September 1959. Note the […]
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I’ll check that on transmission
Mar 14th, 2014 by Tony Benn.This video was recorded by Tony Benn for transmission after his death. Tony devotion to his wife, Caroline, his children, Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Josh, and to his wider family is well known. Our thoughts and sympathy to them for their loss.
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The greatest leader Labour never had
Mar 14th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.The death of Tony Benn this morning is a very sad event for the British Left. He was for so many of us within the Labour party the greatest leader that Labour never had. Tony inspired not only my generation which grew up in the 60s and 70s but generations before and after mine. He […]
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Tony Benn the movie – A sneak preview of ‘Will and Testament’
Nov 19th, 2013 by Newsdesk.This a sneak preview of the feature documentary, Will and Testament which the film-makers say will be coming to cinemas in late Spring 2014, and a very good trailer in its own right it is too. Tony Benn who is 88, is the longest serving Labour MP in history, and also, arguably, the most popular UK […]
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The Wilderness Years
Oct 13th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.If you haven’t seen The Wilderness Years, a BBC series of four hour-long documentaries broadcast in 1995, it’s well worth watching – and you can by following the links below. Documenting the period of Labour’s history from losing the 1979 election to the election of Blair as Labour’s Leader, it relies entirely on archive footage […]
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Owen Jones and the prospects for neo-Bennism
Oct 12th, 2012 by David Osler.The Daily Express was once the largest circulation newspaper in the world, Frederick Forsyth was once this country’s best-selling novelist, and Labour leftism was once a force that could not ignored. All of these statements, dear younger reader, are astounding but true. So I was highly amused to see that the website of the has-been […]
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Could Labour have won in 2010?
Apr 19th, 2011 by Andy Newman.In the final days of last year’s general election campaign, Gordon Brown visited Skelmersdale, to a raw emotional reception. This was an election where Labour was too slow to realise that working class memories of what a Tory government is like were strong. Polly Toynbee, to her credit, did pick up that it was different from politics as usual, and […]
