Tony Benn
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, originally known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn or Wedgie Benn, but later as Tony Benn, was a British politician who was a Member of Parliamentfor 47 years between the 1950 and 2001 general elections and a Cabinet minister in the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s. Originally a "moderate", he was identified as being on the party's hard left from the early 1980s, and was widely seen as a key...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth3 April 1925
deny tempting ifs
It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.
rights water people
People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.
loyalty party eight
The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis ... the 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made.
country thinking years
I think Mrs Thatcher did more damage to democracy, equality, internationalism, civil liberties, freedom in this country than any other Prime Minister this century. When the euphoria surrounding her departure subsides you will find that in a year or two's time there will not be a Tory who admits ever supporting her. People in the street will say, thank God she's gone
philosophy rome laissez-faire
[I am against] the Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez faire as its philosophy and chooses bureaucracy as its administrative method.
determination share carbon
Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares...or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.
empires britain british
Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.
responsibility media class
I sometimes wish the trade unionists who work in the mass media, those who are writers and broadcasters and secretaries and printers and lift operators of Thomson House would remember that they too are members of our working class movement and have a responsibility to see that what is said about us is true.
party radical conferences
The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.
thinking majority lord
When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.
lying class roots
Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.
war thinking long
I opposed the Suez war, I opposed the Falklands war. I opposed the Libyan bombing and I opposed the Gulf war and I never believed that any of those principled arguments lost a single vote - indeed, I think they gained support though that was not why you did it. What has been lacking in Labour politics over a long period is a principled stand
running office intellectual
Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it....The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials.
views liberty share
I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis of personal liberty.