Tributes to Tony Benn

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Today, we have had the chance to pay tribute to the life and work of Tony Benn, one of the greatest MPs and certainly one of the greatest orators of his generation. He would have been gratified that Parliament has had this chance to recall his long involvement in our national political life in this way, despite the fact that he was neither a Head of State nor royalty. He did, however, serve in this place—with a couple of unintended interruptions—for more than 50 years, and was granted the freedom of the Commons when he retired as an MP.

As we have heard over and over again today, we never got doubt or ambiguity with Tony Benn. We have heard many moving anecdotes and tributes to him, and many Members have pointed out that he had strong views, and more talent than most for getting them across to his audience, either from a platform or in a book. He was passionate, and he was a lifelong socialist who never lost his appetite for the battle, even though he waged it in distinctly different phases during his long and fulfilled life.

Tony Benn was an assiduous Back Bencher, and the first to table a motion against apartheid. I last heard him speak during the Remembrance service for Nelson Mandela, held in Westminster Hall at your suggestion, Mr Speaker. He opposed capital punishment, and he championed human rights long before it was fashionable to do so, introducing his own human rights Bill in 1957. He also championed divorce laws, although he enjoyed a 50-year marriage to his beloved wife, Caroline. I can attest to the fact that she was a formidable campaigner in her own right. He was the Peter Mandelson of his day, demanding that Labour modernise its communication strategies, especially where television was concerned, although it is fair to say that his political journey took him in a slightly different direction thereafter.

Tony Benn served, as a junior Minister, as Postmaster General: as a republican, he tried and failed to get rid of the Queen’s head, but he did manage to shrink it down to a much smaller size. As technology Minister, he oversaw the development of Concorde, but I think he tired of the constraints of ministerial office. Instead, he decided that he needed to range more widely to change the political terms of trade by sheer rhetorical force. As we have heard today, he had plenty of sheer rhetorical force. It was for doing that that he came to be regarded by the media as “the most dangerous man in Britain”.

First and foremost, however, Tony Benn revered the House of Commons as the crucible of our democracy, as we have heard over and over again in today’s tributes. He said that it was the place where kings and tyrants could be tamed and revolution averted. This was in contrast to the House of Lords, which he described as the

“British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians”.

His solution to most problems was more accountability and more democracy. Let’s face it, that is never a bad place to start.

Tony Benn fought a determined campaign to renounce the peerage that he had reluctantly inherited on the death of his father in 1960, and it was those sad circumstances that threw him out of the Commons for the first time. His ultimate success in renouncing his hereditary peerage had at least one unintended consequence. The Peerage Act 1963 allowed him to return to the Commons. It also allowed Sir Alec Douglas-Home to renounce his peerage so that he could mysteriously emerge as leader of the Conservative party and succeed Macmillan as Prime Minister, much to the chagrin of Rab Butler, who many still believe was robbed of the premiership in this dubious way. Such was the fuss that the Conservative tradition of allowing leaders to emerge without any obvious voting by anyone had to be abandoned.

Tony Benn was subsequently to lead another successful campaign to extend the franchise of Labour leadership elections beyond the parliamentary Labour party, which was to culminate in the creation of the electoral college at the Wembley special conference in 1981. He lived long enough to see the Labour leadership election franchise extended further to one member, one vote at the special conference that I chaired this March. So it is possible to argue that it was campaigning by Tony Benn that caused the methods of electing the leaders of both the Tory and Labour parties to be reformed, and in both cases it was to move them in a more democratic direction. Of course, his determined opposition to Britain’s membership of what was then called the Common Market helped to give us our first referendum, too.

Tony Benn was a mesmerising speaker in any context: in the Commons; on a platform; and, latterly, on a theatre stage or in the Left Field tent at Glastonbury. He followed in the footsteps of the Levellers and the Chartists. He was a true English radical, evangelising, teaching and persuading generations of left activists about the power and potential of politics to change things for the better. Even when he was making a case with which I did not agree, I marvelled at his formidable communication skills; he had a way of making complex ideas seem simple, and a memorable turn of phrase ensured that his observations stayed with you long after the meeting had ended.

He revelled in social progress. I remember talking to him 20 years ago about the ordination of women into the Anglican priesthood. He had been down especially to watch the first women vicars being ordained and was delighted at the joyful occasion he had witnessed, and he was aware of its significance in the battle for women’s equality. I remember going as a young activist to campaign in the Chesterfield by-election in 1984, in which Tony was seeking to return to the Commons for the second time. My sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), and I went over to help with a contingent which included Allan Roberts, the then Member for Bootle. Things were looking a bit wobbly and the stakes were high. We were sent off to try to remove from a tower block, strategically placed on the main road into the town, a forest of Liberal posters, which had suddenly appeared, causing much consternation in the campaign headquarters. My sister discovered that the posters were down to a disgruntled Labour voter who had decided to switch sides. This lady had demanded, “Get that Tony Benn down here if you want me to change my mind.” By coincidence, we bumped into him a few minutes later and so my sister carted him off to the woman’s front door. She invited him in and he reached over to an old photograph that she had on her mantelpiece. It was a group shot of Labour politicians and he named every one of them, except one, which he correctly surmised was her husband—a former local Labour councillor. She was utterly charmed, and the Liberal posters all came down and were replaced by Labour ones. The tide turned and it was said that in the Labour club that weekend my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) started singing again.

The leader of the Labour party has paid a fulsome tribute to Tony Benn. He leaves behind many memories, and his fascinating and honest diaries, a legacy of which we have heard some today. Most of all, he leaves behind his devoted children, Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua, to whom we extend our sincere condolences. I believe that the tributes we have heard today do a great service to the memory of a great man who lived a long and fulfilled life. May he rest in peace.