THE DEIFICATION OF TONY BENN



The best advice to any writer seeking universally good reviews would be to die. Our culture now has decreed that no sooner does someone in the public eye depart this Earth than, Thatcher being the exception proving the rule, even their bitterest enemies are expected to declare what fine individuals they were. Thus this week we had the spectacle of Bob Crow being lauded in of all places The Spectator and his virtues being sung by none other than Tory attack dog Ian Dale.
So it has been with the death of Tony Benn yesterday. It is perhaps as well then that I warn readers at this point that those expecting another eulogy should stop reading now. If you want to read something in that vein you should look elsewhere, you will be spoilt for choice.

I have a good memory, strong on chronology and politically tuned to the few victories and many defeats of the political causes I espoused. I became fully politically aware in 1972, aged 16, at the time of the National Union of Mineworkers  struggle with Ted Heath, a struggle that led to the three day week and Heath’s eventual demise. I voted for the first time in 1974, twice in fact, for the Labour Party that won the two general elections of that year. I still remember the sense of elation and the, with hindsight, wholly unrealistic, expectations I had now that socialists held the levers of power.In those days it was commonplace for Labour politicians and Labour voters to describe themselves as socialist, not as now considered some sort of faux pas.
The turbulent years of the 1970’s that followed witnessed the great struggles between left and right in the Labour party, a struggle between those wanting a social democratic party on the continental model and those fighting for a Labour party in the revolutionary tradition of the European left. I was in the latter camp.

With the defeat of Callaghan’s government in 1979 this struggle became open civil war famously encapsulated in the campaign for Deputy Leader of the Party between Tony Benn and Denis Healey. It was then that I first began to harbour doubts about Benn. Though supporting the positions he took I had never warmed to him as others did, there was something off putting about the man, perhaps too great a love of populist applause?
Michael Foot (Centre) with Denis Healey (Right)

Michael Foot’s election as leader had been a great victory for the left, a victory I rejoiced in, for Foot had long been a great hero of mine. Though it was a victory the right of the party, led by Roy Jenkins, could not stomach. After the Deputy leaders vote, which Benn only lost by a narrow margin,[1] the party was irrevocably split. Jenkins marched off along with three others becoming the infamous Gang of Four, Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers and David Owen. The split this created on the left of British politics ensured more than a decade of Thatcherite Tory rule.[2] I still feel a visceral loathing of this gang. What perhaps is less appreciated is how much Tony Benn’s crusade for ideological purity also contributed to this split.

Healey proved a loyal and able deputy to Foot, despite having considerable reservations to the policy direction Michael was taking the party. Benn on the other hand continued to campaign for an ideologically pure party and in doing so began to attract the admiring attention f the Trots.

The early years of the 1980’s in the Labour party represented the period of Militant entryism. Anyone who was involved in the left during that period rubbed up against this crowd, and an extremely unpleasant bunch they were. In the words of the political journalist Michael Crick they took their inspiration from Karl Marx, Frederic Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and "virtually nobody else".[3] I can testify to this. This political group was best portrayed by Alan Bleasdale in his television series GBH, indeed the central character seems to have been modelled on the poster boy of Militant, the leader of Liverpool city council Derek Hatton.[4]
Derek Hatton

Far from distancing himself from this thuggish crowd Benn actively courted and embraced them. Benn had been seduced by the attractions of ideological purity and becoming an oppositionist icon. He was eventually embraced by the virulently anti western sects and fundamentalist appeasers of the far left and indeed this morning the Trotskyist front organisation, the so called ‘Stop The War’ website is filled with eulogies for Tony Benn.

Had Benn had his way Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein would all still be in power. He had come to represent a knee jerk anti western ideology the very opposite of the internationalism and belief in the universality and indivisibility of human rights that shaped the old Labour left, not least the former leader of the Labour Party, Michael Foot. This is not a record that I would wish to eulogise.

Benn was certainly not cursed with self doubt and his diary entries have the uncanny effect of making him sound like the only principled person in the room.
The best summary of Benn’s life was on yesterdays Daily Politics and was delivered by Clare Short[5] who eloquently described the flawed personality of a serious committed and talented man seduced by populism. 

Let me say I have no doubt that Tony Benn was personally charming, that unusually for a politician he did not hold grudges or personalise disputes, the ad hominem attack was alien to him.  He was passionate and personally compassionate and despite enjoying considerable celebrity lacked vanity.
At the end of his life he seems to have gained a great many new admirers. An accomplished speaker he was gifted with the ability to communicate his passion and beliefs with great power.

 As I say I have a long memory and Benn’s disloyalty to Michael Foot and the factionalism he openly encouraged I remember well. Those who were fighting in the early 1980's for a Labour victory, - for we knew what a victory for Thatcher would mean- deserved better.

So by all means if Tony Benn touched your life celebrate his. But do not deify him, his voice was a commanding one but it was not the only one. Those other voices,less trenchant, more nuanced also deserve to be heard and remembered. 

   
[1] Many on the left of the party such a Neil Kinnock and Joan Lestor refused to back Benn seeing his decision to stand as divisive.
[2] Ironically had they only waited a little over ten years they would have seen the election of the first SDP Prime Minister in Tony Blair.
[3]Micheal Crick, The March of Militant London Faber 1986 p3 
[4] This Flash Harry is Hatton is now a motivational speaker and is chairman of the new media company Rippleffect. He is also a property developer in Cyprus. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Hatton




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