Tony Benn: he encouraged us.
The words above are Tony Benn’s chosen epithet, which he said he’d be ‘very pleased’ to be remembered by.
It was sadly announced today that he had died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.
Famous for his principled left-wing views, Benn was a long-standing member of the Labour party and its longest serving MP with a parliamentary career spanning 51 years.
Benn topped a BBC poll in 2006 claiming him as the nation’s favourite politician, just pipping Margaret Thatcher.
Respected across the political spectrum, there have been a flood of tributes to him today.
John Leech, MP for Withington, said: “I was sad to hear about the death of Tony Benn but he lived a full life. I pass on my condolences to his family and friends.”
Longsight Councillor Suzanne Richards told MM: “Whether you agreed with his politics or not you always knew where you stood with Tony Benn. He was a principle politician who throughout his 60 year career never gave up the fight for social justice.
“I discovered today that he personally paid for and installed a plaque to suffragette Emily Davison in the House of Commons but never publicised this fact. What a typically unassuming gesture from a very special man. The Labour Party has lost one of its greats.”
Broadcaster Terry Christian expressed his shock at Benn’s death.
“Bloody hell Tony Benn R.I.P – he was like the vocational hero politician from a novel – a man for the people – will we ever say that again,” he tweeted.
Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central, also shared her sorrow: “Very sorry to hear the sad news about Tony Benn. He was a political giant of the last century, principled and passionate.”
Manchester poet Lemn Sissay simply tweeted: “Goodbye Tony Benn and thankyou.”
Benn held cabinet posts under two Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, remaining in a senior Cabinet position upon the election of Callaghan despite having not supported his leadership.
Although a senior politician he never settled into complacency within the Labour party, becoming at times an extremely vocal critic of its policies and direction.
He famously began his political career as the best kind of class traitor, fighting voraciously to reject his hereditary peerage.
His campaign was initially unsuccessful and upon his father’s death Benn’s automatic inclusion into the House of Lords meant he could no longer serve as an MP in his constituency of Bristol South East.
Benn took a typically out-spoken stand and stood in the next election despite being disqualified from holding a seat. Such was his popularity that even knowing he was disqualified his constituents voted for him again.
Although an election court gave his seat to the Conservative runner-up, the Conservative Government of the time eventually introduced the Peerage Act 1963 and Benn was the first to renounce his title, returning to the Commons later that year.
Always something of a nonconformist, Benn once confessed on Radio 4 that he had commemorated an earlier political rebel, suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, by placing a plaque dedicated to her in the same broom cupboard she had once hidden in, in the House of Commons.
He described the memorial as one of ‘very few’ monuments to democracy.
Leaving Parliament in 2001 to, he quipped, ‘spend more time on politics’ he became president of the Stop the War coalition saying, ‘all war is a failure of diplomacy’.
Stop the War coalition also paid their respects today.
“The loss of Tony Benn is a loss for our whole movement,” their statement read.
“He was a good friend to the Stop the War Coalition, of which he remained president to the end. He was a socialist, someone with a deep commitment to social change, who was principled to the end.”
Benn remained a firebrand in his later political life, the strength of his belief in equality never wavered and he leant his support to various organisations and grass-roots movements, speaking at anti-war rallies and demonstrations.
He maintained that: “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and define its finer values.”
As the president of the Coalition of Resistance he was instrumental in the launch of The People’s Assembly Against Austerity, speaking at an event in Manchester in September last year.
Duncan Lawson, 29, a graphic designer based in Manchester city, who saw him speak, described him to MM: “He was an orator who put the backbone into leftwing politics to remind us we could all be lifted up, if only we choose to take a stand.”
Leanne Burke, 30, a nurse from Didsbury, also spoke to MM about meeting Tony Benn: “He took what you wanted to say in your head and said it out loud in a way that was eloquent, angered but not unreasoned, and passionate but not zealous.
“Everyone just shut up when he came on stage, he had a way of speaking to everyone on their level.”
As a champion of the working class we could consider Tony Benn an honorary son of Manchester.
Manchester is the birthplace of trade union and labour movement, the principles and ideals of which Benn always held dear.
His strong socialist rhetoric should be an inspiration to the new left movement stirring in the city.
Tony Benn is survived by his children. In a statement they said: “We will miss above all his love which has sustained us throughout our lives but we are comforted by the memory of his long, full and inspiring life and so proud of his devotion to helping others as he sought to change the world for the better.”
