Tributes to Tony Benn

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this special and important debate, and I want to say a few words of my own and put on record the thoughts of the members of my local Labour party, the constituency and my family on Tony Benn’s sad passing and send our very best wishes to his family, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), whom I am sitting next to today.

Tony Benn was more than just a politician. I believe he was a man who truly wanted to change Britain, and in his own way he did. One aspect of his legacy that has been discussed today is how he stayed in touch with people—and people across generations. He truly cared about whoever he came across. I was lucky enough to meet him on a few occasions, the last one being when he came to the House to listen to the tributes to Nelson Mandela.

I want to share a couple of stories about him. The first shows how his diaries reached the front rooms of many households across this country, not least my own. My sister, Neeraj, absolutely loved his diaries and there have been several Christmases in the Malhotra household where her favourite extracts have been played to everybody.

He was also a serious democrat and he wanted people to understand politics, not just be told about politics or be told what politicians thought. He wanted politics to be done with people, not to people. His sense of commitment to different generations was also marked in a conversation I had recently with pensioners, who spoke of how they would pack out the town hall teas he held every year. The fact that people who were not interested day to day in politics were completely interested in everything he had to say, in that spellbinding way in which he said it, is truly a tribute to the man.

Politics is nothing if it is not for a moral purpose. Whether or not people agreed with how he went about his politics, they cannot deny what he stood for and what he fought for: liberty, equality, democracy. He was a man who had a true passion for progress. He was a thoughtful man and a kind man, and a man who lived what he believed, and a man who, in my view, truly touched the heart of this nation.