Just Finished Reading: The Best of Benn – Speeches, Diaries, Letters, and Other Writings Edited by Ruth Winstone (FP: 2014)

I’ve long had a high opinion of Tony Benn who was a long standing Labour MP who was not only a real Socialist (unlike the faux socialism of New Labour) but was a man who lived his beliefs no matter what fashion or spin doctors advised. Here was a man who not only gave up his hereditary peerage when his father died (in order to remain an MP and not be shunted into the House of Lords) but fought tooth and nail for the right to be a commoner and forced a change in the law to do so. This was a man (sadly now deceased) who not only talked the talk – very well indeed – but most certainly walked the walk. It would be a very brave person indeed who accused Tony Benn of political hypocrisy.

Knowing actually little about him biographically (apart from the day to know knowledge you pick up by watching a politician in action on the TV) I thought this book would be a good place to start. I certainly learned much about his life – training to be a fighter pilot during WW2, losing his elder brother in the fighting after D-Day, his political life post-war, the fight to stay an MP – and so on but also learnt much about his core beliefs (some of which I did not agree with) including workers councils in the then Nationalised Industries as well as worker participation in electing the captains of industry in the Private Sector (an interesting idea though I have no idea how that would work in practice), his objection to joining the European Union (then called the EEC) and especially his objection to joining the Single Currency (both of which had some impact on my views but not enough to change my pro-Europe stance) and much besides. Using extracts from his voluminous diaries, newspaper articles, speeches (both inside and outside Parliament) and extracts from other sources the editor tried to get at the heart of Benn’s life and thought. Although she did a pretty good job I still felt so distance from both. I could certainly hear his voice come through (having heard it many times over the years) but I did really feel that I was skimming the surface of things where I was looking for something deeper.

What the book did do was to prompt me to read more about the man and the era he helped to shape before the age of Tony Blair erupted upon us. I’m intending to read much more on the 1970’s and 80’s in the next year or so and Tony Benn will, I think, show up in references throughout the period. If you’re looking for some additional insight into this iconic socialist this is a pretty good place to be. But as an introduction to the man and his ideas it left me feeling I was still on the starter and waiting for the main course. One for aging British socialists only I feel. But at least I’m prompted to read further which is no bad thing.